Calgary concerts to showcase some of the world’s best amateur pianists

This weekend, there's a two-day festival focused on the best amateur piano players in the world, who want to show what students can do with their passion.

Calgary is hosting some of the best amateur pianists in the world at two weekend concerts.

Les Amateurs Virtuoses Piano Festival is bringing together amateur pianists from France, Japan, the United States and Canada.

This is the first time the event is being hosted in a North American city. The performers are made up of international competition-winning artists who have pursued successful careers outside of music and manage to find time to work and perform at the highest levels.

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It’s a two-night event, first at Mount Royal University’s Bella Concert Hall on April 12 and then on April 13 at the Jack Singer Concert Hall.

Julien Kurtz, festival artistic director and co-founder, came up with the idea for the amateur event in 2007. Since then, it’s played at venues all over the world.

“When we started this festival, there were no such events meant for amateur pianists to play in a non-competitive frame,” he said.

“So, we wanted to offer these people a chance to perform without having to worry about judges and this sort of thing. The aim is to offer a stage to people who would normally play in their living room and it’s a bit of a pity when you hear them.”

Kurtz will also be playing at the festival and says music students all over the world face a major challenge when choosing a career.

While many would like to pursue a career in music, they end up in the corporate world and leave music behind.

“As a teenager I’ve been facing this problem, as have all of us, to balance and decide what to do,” Kurtz said.

“At least we thought that we had to decide what to do, and in fact, one of the conclusions we came to with this festival is that you don’t have to make a choice; it’s a lot of work and commitment, but you can actually do both at a very high level.”

‘Music is my release’

By day, Dr. Thomas Yu is a periodontist dealing with dental implants and gum surgery.

“Music is my release,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what kind of a day I’ve had at the office; when I sit at the piano at the end of the day, everything is released and it’s my therapy and it’s what gives me life and gives me energy back.”

Yu lives in Calgary and has taken his music all over the world, most recently to Asia. He’s working closely with the Calgary Civic Symphony for some unique performances in April.

Yu started playing the piano at five years old when he would listen to his older sisters play during their lessons.

When they finished, he would jump onto the piano bench and play by ear what they had just been practising. That prompted his parents to get him involved in lessons.

“I never really enjoyed playing piano until I was around 17. I just did it because I had to do it,” he said.

“I knew I was good at it, but I never really found the enjoyment and the pure love until I was a little older and I think a lot of kids tend to quit early because they don’t like it.”

Yu is helping to organize the festival in Calgary and hopes the concerts will be inspirational to everyone and show how players can take their passions to the highest levels.

“It’s been an eye-opening experience for me this week, just hosting people from Tokyo, Japan, Paris, France,” he said.

“These are places that I want to go to, but they want to come here, so it makes me feel proud to be a Calgarian.”

Terry Clark, director of the Mount Royal University Conservatory, says the Bella Concert Hall and its 750 seats is the perfect venue for the first night of the festival.

“It’s been a lot of fun because the pianists have been here since Monday practicing in our spaces here at the Taylor Centre,” he said.

“It’s been a real treat for me, getting to sort of loiter outside of their practice rooms and just to hear them and hear the musicality and the power and the passion and their work and getting to talk to them too and understand and learn more about their backgrounds and their stories.”

Clark says what’s unique about the festival is that the audience will not only hear the pianists play but also hear them speak about their passion and career choice along with how they balance piano and work.

“There is often very little interaction that way with the pianists as people,” he said. “But this time we get to see them as pianists and performers and really get to know them as people too.”

Clark has had a chance to see how the amateur pianists have formed their own community.

“The connections, the support, the excitement that they have for one another seems to be unique, that you don’t necessarily get among some of the professional community when they’re jockeying for positions a little bit more,” he said.

“Here they just all want to support each other and see each other do really well.”

Yu is hoping the festival will inspire some young musicians.

“In life, we’re always taught to specialize; you can only do one thing; you have to give (music) up, and there’s a lot of pressure with that,” he said.

“So, I do hope that some students will come and be inspired, maybe they’ll be in that exact same position that I was in making these difficult choices and they might say to themselves, ‘I can do both.‘”