Johanna Ballou and Friends

Diclavis Enorma by David M. Gordon 

 

Takeover by Tristan Evans

 

Two-Handed Storytelling by Christopher Stark 

 

Five Eliot Landscapes I. New Hampshire III. Usk by Thomas Adès, words by T.S. Eliot

 

Terma by Craig Walsh

 

Les Mountons de Panurge by Frederic Rzewski

 

Johanna Ballou is a young American pianist who has been enthralling American and European audiences with her magnetic stage presence and dynamic interpretations. She completed her studies at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in the UK and has studied with Daniel Martyn Lewis, Rolf Hind, Seth Carlin, William Phemister, Vera Parkin, and members of Grammy Award-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird. After her acclaimed Welsh premier of Gyorgy Ligeti’s Piano Concerto, she toured alongside members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and London Sinfonietta for the contemporary chamber opera company Music Theatre Wales. She collaborated with Diversions, the National Dance Company of Wales, and worked in music for Welsh independent film, television, theater, and art installation projects. Since returning to the states in 2009, she has continued her performance career in both solo and collaborative piano. She works closely with composers in the performance of new music, and performs educational programs for children throughout Missouri and Illinois.Ballou’s January concert will include selections that employ a variety of modern classical approaches. The instrumentation will consist, in part, of: clarinet, violin and piano, and the repertoire for her program will include: Histoire du Soldat (Stravinsky), The Horse with the Lavender Eye (Stephen Hartke), Borrowed Chords (Christopher Stark), and Court Studies from the Tempest (Thomas Ades).