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Historical Piano Concerts Series
About the Musicians

Gayle Martin Henry


 
Gayle Martin Henry achieved international prominence as sole American laureate of the sixth International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow – the third American woman ever to reach the finals.

Her performances include appearances with the Houston Symphony (since age 12), the Moscow Radio Philharmonic, the Maracaibo Symphony, the Denver Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Amarillo, Virginia, Central New Jersey and Battle Creek Symphony Orchestras, the California Philharmonic and the Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York.  She has toured throughout South America - including an engagement in Buenos Aires at the Teatro Colón with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Argentina.  In 2004, her performance with the Moravian Philharmonic of Judith Shatin’s Piano Concerto The Passion of St. Cecilia was released by Capstone Records.  Additional concerts include performances at Lincoln Center in New York, at the White House and at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC and numerous other appearances throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, England, Austria, Poland, Israel, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Mainland China.

Gayle Martin Henry’s 2006 schedule has included performances of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #1, and several all-Beethoven concerts, both on fortepiano and Steinways.  She has also recently performed the Ravel Concerto for the Left-Hand, the Beethoven Choral Fantasy, and the Falla Nights in the Gardens of Spain.  Dates in 2007 include performances of the Beethoven Emperor Concerto with the California Philharmonic at the Ambassador Theater in Pasadena.

In reviewing her solo Alice Tully concert at Lincoln Center in 2003, the New York Concert Review wrote that Gayle Martin Henry created “a truly magical atmosphere…and made this listener smile with pleasure.”  Other reviewers have written of “her intense passion and deep-seated emotional response to the music.” (Washington Post), and that “this was a performance which, if recorded on 78s, could have fooled the average pianophile into thinking he or she was listening to one of the greats of the past.” (Woodstock Times)
A native Texan, Gayle Martin Henry was one of the very last students of the famous pedagogue, Mme. Rosina Lhevinne at The Juilliard School.  As a 19-year-old student, she won the Tchaikovsky Concerto Competition and performed it with the Juilliard Orchestra under the baton of Alfred Wallenstein.  Upon graduation, she was awarded the prestigious Josef Lhevinne Prize. She holds the M.A. degree from New York University and was on its piano faculty for five years.

This is her second performance in the Historical Piano Concerts.