Pianist Sarah Hagen has shared the Evergreen Cultural Centre stage with many world-class musicians over the past four years.
This season alone, her Musical Mornings series has seen the likes of soprano Anne Grimm, clarinetist Francois Houle, Marcus Takizawa on viola and Soren Bebe, a Copenhagen-based jazz pianist.
But for her closer this month, Hagen will take the spotlight alone.
It’s not by choice.
Her guest entertainers, the Bergmann piano duo, whom she met more than a decade ago at the Banff Centre, was forced to cancel this week.
As a result, Hagen had to compile a last-minute solo program — one in which she plans to base on the theme of birds and birdsong.
A work by Jean-Philippe Rameau, one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era, will be performed at her April 13 recital along with pieces by the Romantic composers Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann as well as Vancouver’s own Jeffrey Ryan, the recipient of SOCAN’s 2014 Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award for career achievement.
Speaking from Squamish, en route to a Whistler show that night with cellist Rebecca Wenham, Hagen said she has enjoyed seeing her audience grow in Coquitlam.
“To me, that’s how I measure success,” she said.
And Evergreen staff have been equally thrilled with the feedback.
When the series started four years ago, the venue drew about 25 guests to the salon-style concerts on Wednesday mornings; now, the count is around 100 at each of the five events.
“We have partnered with Sarah for four seasons now and it has been a great boon to the Evergreen Cultural Centre,” performing arts manager David Mann said. “Outside of our highly successful New Year’s Eve collaboration with the Quiring Chamber Players, we had found it difficult to find a significant audience for classical music programming at Evergreen.
“Musical Mornings opened the door by providing a proven formula for presenting high-quality soloists — and occasionally duos — in a format that is a bit more casual and audience friendly than the average classical concert,” Mann said.
• Tickets for Sarah Hagen’s final show on April 13 are available by calling the Evergreen Cultural Centre box office at 604-927-6555 or visiting evergreenculturalcentre.ca. The event starts with coffee, tea and treats and is followed by a 75-minute concert.
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