Gabriela Montero
(born May 10, 1970, Caracas) is a Venezuelan pianist.
Montero gave her first public performance at the age of five. At age eight, she made her concert debut with the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra, conducted by José Antonio Abreu and was granted a scholarship from the Venezuelan government to study in the USA. At twelve she won the Baldwin National Competition and AMSA Young Artist International Piano Competition, performing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She has been a student of Lyl Tiempo, Rosalina Sackstein, Andrez Esterhazy and Hamish Milne in London at the Royal Academy of Music. Her competition prizes include the Bronze Medal at the 13th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1995.
In recital, Montero has appeared at the Wigmore Hall London, Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), National Arts Center Ottawa, Orchard Hall (Tokyo), Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), Herkulessaal (Munich), Musikhalle (Hamburg), Berlin Konzerthaus, Sala São Paulo, and the Cologne Philharmonie. Her festival appearances have included the Roque d’Anthéron, Radio France Montpellier, Schleswig-Holstein, MDR Musiksommer, Penderecki, and Radio Canada Chopin festivals. She is invited annually to the 'Progetto Martha Argerich' Festival in Lugano and to Martha Argerich's Buenos Aires Festival.
Montero is also celebrated for her piano improvisations, and for taking requests from audiences for melodies on which she can then improvise. [1] In her interview on All Things Considered
, she says that when she was two or three, she began improvising on lullabies that her mother sang to her. On her CD Bach & Beyond
released in 2006, she improvises on Bach themes. She has also been profiled on the television program 60 Minutes
(December 3, 2006).
Montero recorded and performed at Barack Obama's presidential inauguration on January 20, 2009. She joined cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, and clarinetist Anthony McGill, who performed "Air and Simple Gifts," a new arrangement by John Williams based on the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts
. [2]
Montero has been married and divorced twice. She has two daughters and makes her home in Massachusetts. [3]
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