Anacortes Early Music: The Ghosts of Robert Schumann

• Tamara Friedman, piano
• Lorenzo Marasso, piano

The dynamic duo of Tamara Friedman and Lorenzo Marasso resturns to Anacortes to present a fascinating Romantic program featuring 4-hand and solo piano works of Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms, and a newly commissioned piece by Michael Finnissy, all played on a gorgeous 19th-century pianoforte. The concert takes its name from Schumann's last work, the "Geistervaratiationen" ("Ghost Variations") of 1854, based on his leitmotif, "dictated by angels."

About Anacortes Early Music Concert Series

The Anacortes Early Music Concert Series has brought historically informed performances featuring world-renowned musicians and rising stars to Anacortes for over a decade. Historically informed performance (period performance) is an approach in Western music which adheres to the knowledge, as it is currently known, of the instruments and performance practice of the period in which the music was conceived. Access to examples of earlier musical instruments and historical treatises are the basis on which period performance is formed. Instruments corresponding to the period of the music being performed are used, as well as technique and aesthetics of the period. Anacortes Early Music is a project of the Anacortes Arts Foundation.

About Tamara Friedman, piano

Pianist Tamara Friedman has been praised for the depth, wit, and humor of her lively performances (Seattle Times) and appreciated as "the magnificent pianist" whose "way with Mozart reached my heart as well as my intellect" (Journal Tribune, Portland, Maine). Tamara attended the Oberlin Conservatory and received her master’s degree from the Mannes College of Music (NYC). She has collaborated with such international artists as Stanley Ritchie, Jaap Schröder, and Vicki Boeckman, and appears with violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock as Duo Amadeus. In the Pacific Northwest she has performed on the Seattle Camerata, Allegro Baroque and Beyond, Belle Arte, Early Music Guild, Gallery Concerts, and Mostly Nordic series and for the Governor’s Chamber Music Festival.

Tamara has been a featured performer in early piano workshops for Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA), Seattle, Edmonds, and Washington State Music Teachers Associations, and the Western Early Keyboard Association. She maintains a private studio in La Conner, WA, where she teaches modern piano and fortepiano on her collection of 18th- and 19th-century keyboard instruments, which is on display at SEKM!—the Skagit Early Keyboard Museum.

Tamara spends her summers in Bath, Maine, where she also has a group of historical pianos and performs on the Kennebec Early Music Festival.

About Lorenzo Marasso, piano

Lorenzo Marasso is an impassioned and sympathetic conductor, concert pianist, chamber musician, educator and radio host. Dubbed the "king of repertoire," Lorenzo's creative programming reveals lesser known masterpieces and rarely performed arrangements. Lorenzo's performances have been broadcast in numerous media outlets, including Seattle's 98.1 Classical King FM and NPR. In 2021 Lorenzo founded the Seattle Chamber Orchestra and is serving now as the ensemble's music director. In the same year he also started hosting a weekly radio program called Dress Rehearsal on 107.3FM KBFG Seattle. Equally inspired by contemporary music, Lorenzo has commissioned and performed world premieres of new works by several international composers who have written and dedicated pieces to him. In July 2020 he completed the Invention Project, a commission of new pieces for piano inspired by J.S. Bach's Inventions and Sinfonias. Further commissions included works composed by Michael Finnissy, Edward Cowie and Bernhard Lang.