Julliard Professor in Perry Hall and a Steelers Fan?

I went to watch the Super Bowl with some ex-daycare clients of mine and their assembled friends. We are all originally from the Pittsburgh area and like to congregate with like minds to watch our beloved Steelers. Yes, my Ravens friends, the Steelers fell one touchdown short of their seventh championship ring, but I got to meet one our most illustrious neighbors quite by accident. 

Upon leaving the party, my hostess happened to be holding a CD, which she said was recorded by one of her guests that had already left. It was a classical CD by Dr. Ernest Barretta. Ernest was her next-door neighbor when they lived in Perry Hall. You never know who might be sitting right next to you at a football party, someone who is part of our rich and diverse musical legacy here in Perry Hall. An unknown stop on the Perry Hall Musical Tour!

I did a little research about Ernest on the Internet and then spoke with him the following afternoon. Ernest was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, just a stone’s throw from my native backyard (hence the Steeler affiliation).  He told me that when he was about 6 years old his parents bought his older sister a keyboard for Christmas. While his sister soon lost interest, Ernest took it up in, well, earnest. He began to take organ lessons locally and sometime in his teens he branched out to piano and took lessons from Joe Lesak in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. 

From there he studied music theory and composition at the famed Carnegie Mellon University. He furthered his studies at Oberlin College and Conservatory and then the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University here in Baltimore where he completed a Ph.D. degree in music.

It's through the Peabody connection that he ended up in Baltimore. He made Perry Hall his home after he and his wife had a daughter and had to reconsider their cramped living arrangements in Cockeysville. 

Further connecting him in our community is the fact that he is the Director of Liturgical Music at St. Joseph Parish, right here on Belair Road. Ernest had been the assistant director, but when the director went back to school he assumed the job. He conducts three of the church’s five choirs, while playing a little music at the parish himself. Ernest also commutes two days a week to the world-renown Julliard School of Music in New York City, where he is on the faculty teaching in the pre-college division. 

Ernest has been a sought-after collaborator and session pianist, most notably with Gregory Miller, a horn player on "Solos for the Horn Player" (2006). The CD features 14 compositions from such classic masters as Beethoven, Brahms, Handel, and Purcell.

Most recently, however, Ernest has released a solo CD recorded in St. Petersburg, Russia of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Minor, Opus 35. The concerto features the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra directed by Vladimir Lande with whom Ernest had worked with at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

The concerto was performed as part of the Festival of Palaces on June 11, 2009 in the Belosolsky-Belozersky Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. The palace was built in 1747 for Prince Mikhail Andreevitch Belosselsky during the reign of Elizabeth of Russia and once served as the Communist Party's district headquarters. It is now the premier cultural venue. The CD preserves a rich and emotive performance of the concerto’s four movements. 

For those of you that would like to see your neighbor Ernest in person, his next local performance will be in Annapolis on March 12, with the Chesapeake Youth Symphony. The event will be a gala for the CYSO at St. John’s College in the Key Auditorium. You can call 443-758-3157 for information.