By Mark Ambrogi
Celebrated pianist Andre Watts has a long history with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
“I first played with the ISO under music director Izler Solomon about 50 years ago,” Watts said. “I’ve played with every music director since then, and even though there have been many personnel changes over the years, I have a comfortable familial feeling when I play with this orchestra.”
Watts, 69, will be the guest piano soloist with the ISO, and will play only the MacDowell concerto he said. Watts will appear with the ISO at 3 p.m. April 17 at the Palladium in Carmel. Prior to his Palladium appearance, Watts will join the ISO at 8 p.m. April 15 and 5:30 p.m. April 16 for concerts at Hilbert Circle Theatre in Indianapolis.
Gilbert Varga will serve as the conductor.
“The other composers on the program will be represented by purely orchestral pieces,” Watts said. “I will play the MacDowell only twice this season (the other being in Minneapolis). This is an American work, but the Compositional language is really German Romanticism.”
Other in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture, Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod and Tristan und Isolde and Franck’s Psyche at Eros.
At age 16, Watts appeared on the Young People’s Concert Jan. 12, 1963, performing Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1. He was accompanied by the New York Philharmonic and conducted by Leonard Bernstein. That concert was nationally televised three days later. Later that year, he released his first album, “The Exciting Debut of Andre Watts.” That same year he received a Grammy Award for promising new classical musical artist. In 1988, he received the Avery Fisher Prize, one of the top individual honors for an American classical musician.
Watts joined the faculty as a professor at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music in 2004.
Watts also will appear with the ISO in September.
For more, visit thecenterpresent.org or indianapolissymphony.org.
