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This afternoon (Saturday, October 26) I stopped by to take a look at the handsome new home for the Pianoforte Foundation. The Foundation has moved from their former quarters in the Fine Arts Annex, to a three story,
11,000 square foot building at 1335 South Michigan, rehabbed by Neil Sheehan of
Sheehan Partners Architects.
The first floor is
PianoForte Chicago, a retail piano store opened in 2004 by Thomas Zoells, who the next year established the
PianoForte Foundation, “dedicated to preserving and promoting the art of the piano in Chicago and creating a vibrant piano community that closely connects audiences and artists.”
On the second floor at 1335 are offices, a kitchen, a series of practice rooms, and the aforementioned 100 seat performance space, a comfortable, acoustically alive environment which sounded good to me, although I have to admit mechanical or plumbing sounds sometimes intruded into the room at a low level.
I was taking pictures of the hall when a young woman came in, sat down at the Fazioli piano, and began to play Bach. She was practicing the Well-Tempered Clavier in a romantic, utterly musical performance, full of color and life, which carried over to the Chopin preludes, and selections from the etudes, Op. 10, that came next. I was having the extreme good fortune of stumbling onto the rehearsal of pianist
Kimiko Ishizaka for her recital at 7:30 p.m. tonight. If you can make it, do so. You won't regret it. She's an absolutely marvelous performer. The recital is free, and if you come early, at 7:00 p.m., you can hear a discussion about Ishizaka's Open-Source Bach project.
If you can't make it, you can watch a live broadcoast of the concert via Google Hangouts. I haven't quite figured out exactly how it works, myself, but you can check it out for yourself
here.
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