Legendary Pianist Menahem Pressler to Perform at UConn
Sunday, October 21, 2007, 3:00 p.m.[/b]

The University of Connecticut’s School of Fine Arts will present the 11th annual Alice Murray Heilig Memorial Concert with the incomparable 83-year-old pianist Menahem Pressler on Sunday, October 21 at 3 p.m.

The event will be at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts.

The program will include Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op.110; Estampes by Debussy; and Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960.

Admission to the concert is free.

A brilliant soloist and internationally acclaimed chamber musician, Pressler is “a poet, time and again revealing unsuspected depths in works that have been endlessly plumbed and surveyed” (The New York Times). He brings to his performances “a magisterial rightness that could only come from a lifetime of immersion...” in his music (The New York Observer).

In 1998 Menahem Pressler became one of only five recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award by Gramophone magazine. The five-time Grammy nominee (the latest in 2006), founded the Beaux Arts Trio 50 years ago, has recorded more than 80 albums, and has received hundreds of honors.
In 2007 he was named an Honorary Fellow of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in honor of his leadership in music.

In 2005 he received Germany’s highest honor, the President’s Deutsche Bundesverdienstkreuz (Cross of Merit), and Frances highest cultural honor, the Commandeur in the Order of Arts and Letters Award.
Other recent honors include induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German Critics
Ehrenurkunde” award, and Chamber Music America’s Distinguished Service Award. He holds the Dean Charles H. Webb Chair in Music at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, and has taught students there for 50 years.

He tours with the Beaux Arts Trio, gives solo performances worldwide, and teaches master classes as a guest artist around the world.

The Alice Murray Heilig Memorial Concert was established at the University of Connecticut School of Fine Arts by the Heilig family in memory of Alice Murray Heilig’s life and love of music. West Hartford philanthropist Alice Murray Heilig, wife of Charles Heilig, was a talented pianist in her own right, and a passionate lover of the arts who was involved in many arts organizations in Connecticut.

“The Department of Music is delighted that Menahem Pressler will be the artist-in-residence for this year’s Alice Murray Heilig Memorial Concert and master class. Mr. Pressler is a legendary world-class artist who will bring a lifetime of experience to our students, audiences, faculty and staff,” said Kenneth Fuchs, head of the Department of Music.
The concert is free and open to the public.

Tickets are not required. For information, call (860) 486-2969 or go online: www.jorgensen.uconn.edu.

Jorgensen is located at 2132 Hillside Road, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Parking is available at no extra charge in the North Parking Garage.