The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Native daughter and St. Olaf College pianist Kathryn Ananda-Owens returns to Madison for FREE recital of Mozart, Debussy and Justin Merritt on this Friday at noon at the First Unitarian Society.

By Jacob Stockinger

When I first met Kathryn Ananda-Owens (below), I was a journalist reporting on education and she was a promising student at Memorial High School where she had just won a prestigious national science award and competition.

But she was also a very gifted young pianist, and music proved to be the profession she ended up pursuing. Indeed, she became the winner of the first annual Neale-Silva Young Artists Competition held in 1993 by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Kathy studied at Oberlin College and then the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. For many years now, she has been a professor of piano at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, which is renowned for its music department and especially its choral music.

She has toured in Asia and Europe, has perform solo recitals chamber music and concertos with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the St. Olaf Orchestra. She has performed at Lincoln Center in New York City and has made several Compact Disc recordings.

Here is a link to a biographical sketch:

http://wp.stolaf.edu/music/people/kathryn-ananda-owens/

Kathy returns to Madison periodically, but not always to play in public. But she will perform this Friday at the FREE Noon Musicale held weekly in the Landmark Auditorium (below top and bottom) of the historic First Unitarian Society of Madison Meeting House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built at 900 University Bay Drive, from 12:15 to 1 p.m.

Her program is a terrific combination of the old classics and new music.

Kathy will play Mozart’s dramatic Sonata in C Minor K. 457 and two of Debussy’s “Estampes” (Prints): “Pagodes” (Pagodas, played by David Cabassi during the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in a popular YouTube video at that bottom) and “Jardins Sous la Pluie”  (Gardens in the Rain.)

In addition she will perform a contemporary work that was written for her: “Album Leaves” by Justin Merritt (below), who has been in residence at St. Olaf College.