Austrian Pianist Anna Magdalena Kokits

Friday, September 29, 2017 7:00 pm - 7:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Pianist Anna Kokits
Anna Magdalena Kokits - Coast to Coast Tour

Award-winning Austrian pianist Anna Magdalena Kokits will play a selection of modern and classical pieces as part of her coast-to-coast tour during Canada 150.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

32 Variationen in c-moll, WoO 80 (1806)

Manuela Kerer (*1980) 

Dla Rajun (2013)

Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942)

Fantasien über Gedichte von Richard Dehmel op. 9 (1898)

Ernst Toch (1887-1964)

Capriccetti op. 36 (1925)

George Gershwin (1889-1937)

Rhapsody in Blue, Version für Solo Klavier (1924)

You can listen to some samples of Ms. Kokits's music on her website or get a glimpse of her at the piano:

CALLIOPE

In addition to Ms. Kokits' concert, the Austrian Embassy will be showcasing an exhibition called "CALLIOPE AUSTRIA: Women in Society, Culure and the Sciences." The exhibition is both a celebration of women in Austrian history and a reckoning with their invisibleness in the history books. CALLIOPE opens this evening and will then be available for general viewing from Monday, October 3 - Thursday, October 12.

About Anna Magdalena Kokits

Anna Magdalena Kokits was born in Vienna in 1988. She received her first piano tuition at the age of four, and only a few years later found her ideal teacher and mentor in Alejandro Geberovich (*Buenos Aires, 1948), with whom she went on to complete her studies at the Vienna Conservatorium Private University in 2013.

As a prize winner of several national and international competitions she soon attracted attention, and gave her first solo performances with orchestras such as the Tonkünstler Orchester Niederösterreich and the Moscow Virtuosos while still in her teens. Along with pursuing her solo career, which has made her a frequent and popular guest at festivals all over Europe (e. g. the festival “Nei suoni dei luoghi” in Italy, the “Euregio Musikfestival” in the Netherlands, the “Musikalischer Sommer in Ostfriesland” in Germany and the “Music in Rhodes Festival” in Greece), she has made chamber music one of the main focuses of her activity: From 2007 to 2014 she formed a duo with ‘cellist Alexander Gebert, performing at major venues across Europe and beyond and producing a CD recording due for release in 2015. Other partners of renown include Dimitri Ashkenazy, Eduard Brunner, Chen Halevi, Lars Wouters van den Oudenweijer, Herbert Kefer, the Bennewitz Quartet et al. 

Anna Magdalena Kokits devotes a lot of her time to contemporary music, and has cooperated closely with composers such as Richard Dünser, Tomasz Skweres, Helmut Schmidinger, Thomas Larcher, Christoph Renhart and Lukas Haselböck. In addition, she is particularly interested in rediscovering lesser-known or forgotten repertoire – at present, she is working on the premiere recording of the complete piano works of Ernst Toch (1887-1964) and a CD of chamber pieces by Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996).

Ms. Kokits's appearance is co-sponsored by Conrad Grebel University College and the Embassy of Austria in Ottawa. Photo of Ms. Kokits by Nancy Horowitz.

More information about Anna Magdalena Kokits, and details about her cross-Canada tour are featured on this Article in Ottawa Citizen.

      

Austrian Embassy Ottawa

Logo of the Austrian Cultural Forum

Logo of the Alexander Zemlinsky Fonds

Logo for HeForShe campaign