Natasha Paremski to Perform at Saratoga's Montalvo Arts Center

Editor's Note: The following press release was submitted by Montalvo Arts Center.

The Montalvo Arts Center Piano Masters Series continues with yet another performance by a remarkable musician: Russian-born, Fremont-raised Natasha Paremski will perform at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 3 at the Carriage House Theater at Montalvo Arts Center, 15400 Montalvo Rd., Saratoga.

Tickets, —which begin at $40 for the general public, $36 for Montalvo members, and $15 for students with ID—are, are available at montalvoarts.org and through the Box Office at 408-961-5858 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday. With this concert, Montalvo contines its mission to bring diverse, world-class talent to South Bay audiences.

For Paremski, the engagement at Montalvo is something of a homecoming as well as the fulfillment of a long-cherished fantasy. “When I was a child, I spent countless weekends visiting the Montalvo Arts Center with my family for concerts and hikes,” she said. “I only ever dreamed I’d someday be able to perform there. What a joy it is to be able to finally realize this dream, and with a program that I hold so near and dear to my heart: I'll be playing Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor (‘The Tempest’), Chopin's Scherzo No. 3 in C sharp minor, and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.”

Only 25 years old, Natasha Paremski has already established herself as a major pianistic talent. She is hailed by critics both in this country and abroad for her musical sensibility, impecable technique, and electrifying showmanship. Her growing list of awards includes the 2010 Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year, the 2007 Prix Montblanc, the 2006 Gilmore Young Artist Award, top prize in the 2002 Bronislaw Kaper Awards sponsored by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and top prize in the Young Artists in Carnegie Hall 2000 International Piano Festival.

Paremski has been fascinated by the piano almost as long as she has been able to speak. As a toddler, she spent hours sitting at the piano in her family’s Moscow apartment picking out tunes on the keyboard. “To me, it was a fun toy that made all these beautiful sounds,” Paremski recalled. "My mom hated it. I didn't have a musical ear at age 2." Impressed by her innate affinity for the instrument, her parents enrolled her in formal music instruction at age four. She studied with Nina Malikova at the Andreyev School of Music.

In 1995, her family immigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Fremont, California. Paremski continued her studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and made her professional début at age nine with the El Camino Youth Symphony. At the age of fifteen, she debuted with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and recorded two discs on the Bel Air Music Label with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under Dmitry Yablonsky. The following year, she went off to study in New York with Pavlina Dokovska at Mannes College of Music, from which she graduated in 2007.

As her career has blossomed, Paremski has toured on both sides of the Atlantic, performing as a soloist with some of the world’s most distinguished orchestras. In North America, these include the Toronto Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Houston Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, Dallas Symphony, New York Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall. In Europe and Asia, these include the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan. She has also given recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, the Schloss Elmau and Verbier festivals, and on the Rising Stars Series of Gilmore and Ravinia.

Paremski’s accomplishments extend beyond realm of classical music and the formal concert hall. For the past five years, she has enjoyed a collaborative relationship with rocker Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, who recruited her for a theater project about the lives of Robert and Clara Schumann. This project came to fruition in 2010 with a performance at the Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center: Paremski embodied the spirit of Clara Schumann while pianist Jeremy Denk embodied Robert. The performance was later released on DVD. Additionally, in 2008, Paremski was featured in a major two-part film for BBC Television on the life and work of Tchaikovsky, shot on location in St. Petersburg, also to result of a partnership with Sting and Styler. That same year, Paremski was the featured pianist in choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s Danse Concertantes at New York’s Joyce Theatre.

A passionate advocate for new music, Paremski includes in her repetoire compositions by John Corigliano and Fred Hersch. In 2012, she played the New York premiere of Hersch’s “Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky,” which he composed specifically for her. Last November, in addition to appearing in WQXR's Beethoven Marathon, she released her first solo album, a collection of sonatas by Brahms, Prokofiev and Kahane. It debuted at number nine on the Billboard classical chart.