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Piano
Pianist Stephen Drury, named 1989 Musician of the Year by the Boston Globe, has concertized throughout the world with a repertoire that stretches from Bach to Liszt to the music of today. He has given solo performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C., New York's Symphony Space, and from Arkansas to California to Hong Kong to Paris.
A champion of 20th-century music, Drury's performances of music ranging from the piano sonatas of Charles Ives to works by John Cage and György Ligeti have received the highest critical acclaim. He has appeared at the MusikTriennale Koln in Germany, the Subtropics Festival in Miami, the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, and the North American New Music Festival in Buffalo as well as at Roulette and the Knitting Factory in New York. At Spoleto USA and at the Angelica Festival in Bologna he performed as both conductor and pianist. He has also conducted the Britten Sinfonia in England, the Santa Cruz New Music Works Ensemble, and the Harvard Group for New Music. In 1992 Stephen Drury directed the world premiere of George Russell's Time Line for orchestra, chorus, jazz band and soloists. In 1988 - 1989 he organized a year-long festival of the music of John Cage which led to a request from the composer to perform the solo piano part in Cage's 1O1, premiered with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in April, 1989. Drury has commissioned new works for solo piano from John Cage, John Zorn, Terry Riley, and Chinary Ung with funding provided by Meet The Composer. In March of 1995 he gave the first performance of John Zorn's concerto for piano and orchestra Aporias with Dennis Russell Davies and the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra. Later that same season he gave the premiere of Basic Training for solo piano, written for him by Lee Hyla.
Stephen Drury was selected by the United States Information Agency for its Artistic Ambassador Program, which led to a 1986 European recital tour. A second tour in the fall of 1988 took him to Pakistan, Hong Kong, and Japan. He gave the first piano recitals ever in Julianehaab, Greenland, and Quetta, Pakistan. In 1989 the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Mr. Drury a Solo Recitalist Fellowship which funded residencies and recitals of American music for two years. He tours frequently with the John Zorn Ensemble, performing in Paris, New York, London, Madrid, Vienna, Brussels, and Cologne, and has conducted Zorn's music in Bologna, Boston, and San Jose (Costa Rica).
In 1985 Mr. Drury was chosen by Affiliate Artists for its Xerox Pianists Program, and performed in residencies with symphony orchestras in San Diego, Cedar Rapids, San Angelo, Spokane, and Stamford (Connecticut). In addition he has performed or recorded with the American Composers Orchestra, the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Radio Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Boston Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, the Springfield (Massachusetts), and Portland (Maine) Symphony Orchestras, and the Romanian National Symphony. In 1999 he was invited by choreographer Merce Cunningham to perform onstage with Cunningham and Mikhail Barishnikov as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. Drury has appeared recently in New York at Alice Tully Hall as part of the Great Day in New York Festival, in Boston with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players and as soloist with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and with the Seattle Chamber Players in Seattle and Moscow at the International Music Festival "Images of Contemporary American Music".
Stephen Drury has given masterclasses at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Mannes Beethoven Institute, and Oberlin Conservatory, and in Japan, Romania, Argentina, Costa Rica, Denmark, and throughout the United States, and served on juries for the Concert Artist Guild and Orléans Concours International de Piano XXème Siècle Competitions. Drury is artistic director of the Callithumpian Consort, and he created and directs the Summer Institute for Contemporary Piano Performance at New England Conservatory. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, and has also earned the New England Conservatory's select Artist Diploma. His teachers have included Claudio Arrau, Patricia Zander, William Masselos, Margaret Ott, and Theodore Lettvin. He has recorded the music of John Cage, Elliott Carter, Charles Ives, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Colin McPhee, John Zorn, and Frederic Rzewski, as well as works of Liszt and Beethoven, for Mode, New Albion, Catalyst, Tzadik, MusicMasters and Neuma. He teaches at New England Conservatory in Boston.
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