By Sentinel Staff
Cellist Zuill Bailey and pianist Awadagin Pratt will celebrate their 33-year friendship at two Sitka Summer Music Festival events this weekend.
The first will be a cocktail party, 4-6 p.m. Saturday, April 13, at Stevenson Hall (on the SJ Campus).
The second will be a brunch concert noon-2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 14, at Harrigan Centennial Hall. It will include a brunch buffet with a welcome mimosa, a cash bar and a silent auction. The concert by the two friends will feature works from Bach, Brahms, Beethoven and Mendelssohn.
Tickets are $40 for the cocktail party, $75 for the brunch concert. A combo ticket for both events is $100.
Information can be found at sitkamusicfestival.org, and by calling the festival office, 747-6774.
Bailey, artistic director of the Sitka Summer Music Festival, has been a featured soloist with symphony orchestras worldwide, and has won numerous awards and honors, including Grammy Awards in 2017.
He has issued recordings with Pratt, his friend since the two played ping pong together at Meadowmount School of Music in Westport, New York. Bailey was a student at the summer camp and Pratt was on the staff.
Pratt also has performed at the Sitka Summer Music Festival and with nearly every major orchestra in the country. He first gained recognition by winning the Naumburg International Piano Competition in 1992, the first African American pianist to win the prestigious competition.
Pratt, who also plays violin, has released three albums and is a professor of piano at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati.
The dates of this year’s Sitka Summer Music Festival concert season are June 5-30. The program schedule is available at the festival website, sitkamusicfestival.org.
