Tonight's performance of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto will now be performed by Natasha Paremski.

Join us for the last in our C3 Series: three interlinked concerts that highlight how individual creativity creates connections between us, which then help forge a community. We open with audience participation during Chinese master Tan Dun's short work that includes sounds of wind and birdsong that you're invited to play from your phone while the orchestra plays onstage! Then, we debut our four-year "First Symphony Project" with the new work by Composer-in-Residence Matt Browne. As the grand finale, we hear Sergei Rachmaninov's epic Second Piano Concerto, which brought him back from the brink of writer's block that threatened his career.

Program subject to change.

Participate with your phone during the concert!

Tan Dun's Passacaglia: Secret of Wind and Birds weaves together the ancient sounds of birds with modern technology, including a smartphone. To participate from the audience on May 26, you must download an audio track to your smartphone.

Find this file on your device at the beginning of the performance and wait for the conductor's cue! (Please be sure that your device is in "airplane mode" before the performance begins, in order to prevent unwanted noises.)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE AUDIO FILE TO YOUR PHONE.

Arrive early for these Concert Night Activities!

• 6:00 - 7:30 pm:
  • Meet Matt Browne — Visit with Composer-in-Residence Matt Browne and learn about his creative process.
  • Witness the Inspiration — View Thomas Cole's The Course of Empire painting series that inspired Matt Browne's new work.
  • Download the Backing Track — Download Tan Dun's Secret of Wind and Birds audio track to be a part of the concert.
    
  • Learn to Compose — Learn the basics of music composition and have your piece performed live in the moment
    
    
• 6:30 - 7:00 pm: Attend the Eugene Symphony Guild Pre-Concert Talk with Music Director & Conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong and pianist Natasha Paremski.
  
  
• Post Concert: Experience the Post-Concert Talk on stage immediately following the concert with Music Director & Conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong and Composer-in-Residence Matt Browne, moderated by Eugene Symphony Executive Director Scott Freck.

Natasha Paremski

With her consistently striking and dynamic performances, pianist Natasha Paremski reveals astounding virtuosity and voracious interpretive abilities. She continues to generate excitement from all corners as she wins over audiences with her musical sensibility and powerful, flawless technique.

Natasha is a regular return guest of many major orchestras, including Minnesota Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Grant Park Festival, Winnipeg Symphony, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Elgin Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Virginia Symphony, and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with whom she has performed every year since 2008 in venues such as Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, and Cadogan Hall. She has performed with major orchestras in North America including Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Houston Symphony, NAC Orchestra in Ottawa, Nashville Symphony. She has toured extensively in Europe with such orchestras as Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Vienna’s Tonkünstler Orchester, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestre de Bretagne, the Orchestre de Nancy, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchester in Zurich, Moscow Philharmonic, under the direction of conductors including Thomas Dausgaard, Peter Oundjian, Andres Orozco-Estrada, Jeffrey Kahane, James Gaffigan, JoAnn Falletta, Fabien Gabel, Rossen Milanov and Andrew Litton. In addition, she has toured with Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica in Latvia, Benelux, the United Kingdom and Austria as well as appearances with National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra in Taipei. Natasha has given recitals at the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, Wigmore Hall, Schloss Elmau, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, Verbier Festival, Seattle’s Meany Hall, Kansas City’s Harriman Jewell Series, Santa Fe’s Lensic Theater, Ludwigshafen BASF Series, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Tokyo’s Musashino Performing Arts Center and on the Rising Stars Series of Gilmore and Ravinia Festivals.

A passionate chamber musician, Natasha is a regular recital partner of Grammy-winning cellist Zuill Bailey, with whom she has recorded a number of CDs. Their Britten album on Telarc debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Chart, remaining there for a number of weeks, in addition to being featured on The New York Times Playlist. She has been a guest of many chamber music festivals such as Jeffrey Kahane's Green Music Center ChamberFest, the Lockenhaus, Toronto, Sitka Summer Music, and Cape Cod Chamber Music festivals to name a few.

Natasha was awarded several prestigious prizes at a very young age, including the Gilmore Young Artists prize in 2006 at the age of eighteen, the Prix Montblanc in 2007, the Orpheum Stiftung Prize in Switzerland. In September 2010, she was awarded the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year. Her first recital album was released in 2011 to great acclaim, topping the Billboard Classical Charts, and was rereleased on the Steinway & Sons label in September 2016 featuring Islamey recorded on Steinway's revolutionary new Spirio technology. In 2012 she recorded Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Fabien Gabel on the orchestra’s label distributed by Naxos. With a strong focus on new music, Natasha’s growing repertoire reflects an artistic maturity beyond her years. In the 2010-11 season, she played the world premiere of a sonata written for her by Gabriel Kahane, which was also included in her solo album. Natasha continues to extend her performance activity and range beyond the traditional concert hall. In December 2008, she was the featured pianist in choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s Danses Concertantes at New York’s Joyce Theater. She was featured in a major two-part film for BBC Television on the life and work of Tchaikovsky, shot on location in St. Petersburg, performing excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and other works. In the winter of 2007, Natasha participated along with Simon Keenlyside in the filming of Twin Spirits, a project starring Sting and Trudie Styler that explores the music and writing of Robert and Clara Schumann, which was released on DVD. She has performed in the project live several times with the co-creators in New York and the U.K., directed by John Caird, the original director/adaptor of the musical Les Misérables.

Natasha began her piano studies at the age of four with Nina Malikova at Moscow’s Andreyev School of Music. She then studied at San Francisco Conservatory of Music before moving to New York to study with Pavlina Dokovska at Mannes College of Music, from which she graduated in 2007. Natasha made her professional debut at age nine with El Camino Youth Symphony in California. At the age of fifteen she debuted with Los Angeles Philharmonic and recorded two discs with Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.

Born in Moscow, Natasha moved to the United States at the age of eight becoming a U.S. citizen shortly thereafter, and is now based in New York.