adrienne park, piano

Program Notes

This work is all about the delicate and tiny cream-colored flowers known as "Lily of the Valley" or "White Choral Bells", and it is also all about Adrienne's grandparents: a husband who planted flowers in the yard nearly at random so that his wife would be surprised every spring as flowers came up out of the ground, all over the place.

A constant and reliable springtime visitor, however, was a tuffet of Lily of the Valley flowers that he planted outside her kitchen window...decades after they were planted, they still come up every year. This work is written in honor of Adrienne's grandparents, and speaks to the magic and perfume that these little flowers give off with such abundance, and a long, long romance out of which blossomed flowers and a family.

More about flower catalog

About the Artist

Adrienne Park has a wide breadth of experience performing as a collaborative pianist in chamber music settings and as a pianist within symphonic settings. For six years at The Banff Centre’s Music and Sound program, she was the faculty collaborative pianist for the fall and winter residencies, with the central mission of helping resident artists realize their artistic endeavors. She has performed in recital with many renowned artists, including violinists Joshua Bell and Andrew Dawes, cellists Shauna Rolston and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, bassist Edgar Meyer, flutists Paul Edmund Davies, Timothy Hutchins and Tara Helen O’Connor, bassoonist Frank Morelli, saxophonist Nikita Zimin, horn player Frøydis Ree Wekre, percussion group NEXUS, soprano Mary Wilson, and tenor Telly Leung. For fifteen years, Adrienne has performed regularly with the Memphis Chamber Music Society. 

Adrienne is Principal Piano, Celeste and Keyboards with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Robert Moody, a position she has held since 2004. In addition to their symphonic series, the MSO performs annually with Ballet Memphis, New Ballet Ensemble and Opera Memphis. She also performs with IRIS Orchestra, directed by Michael Stern, whose roster includes musicians from some of the country’s best orchestras, universities and chamber groups. As part of the IRIS chamber music series at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, she will soon perform a recital with violinist Nancy Zhou, winner of the 2018 Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition. 

As a proponent of contemporary music, Adrienne has performed many world premieres. With Kokoro Dance, she premiered Sunyata, Truths of the Blood, Dance of the Dead, Encounters with the Goddess, Sade—Part II, and Embryonic Cavatina. With Joe Ink Dance, she performed in a contemporary jazz ensemble led by composer John Korsrud to premiere Swing Theory and Seven. She co-founded the trio SqueezPlay with accordionist Douglas Schmidt and percussionist David Carlisle with cellist Shauna Rolston as guest. The group recorded a CD of original works entitled rubber horn with producer Mark S. Willsher, performing the works at the Winnipeg New Music Festival. Adrienne will soon premiere one of twelve preludes for solo piano from Flower Catalog by American melodist Stephanie Ann Boyd of ICEBERG New Music.

As a faculty member at the University of Mississippi, Adrienne has been a collaborative pianist since 2001. In 2013, she launched Sonic Explorations, a chamber music series that highlights the talents of music faculty and professional musicians in the region. She recently redesigned the curriculum for Keyboard Fundamentals, a required course for music majors. In addition to teaching applied piano at the University, she has an active private piano studio in Oxford, Mississippi.

Adrienne studied with Abbey Simon and Ruth Tomfohrde at the University of Houston and with Robert Silverman at the University of British Columbia.

More about Adrienne on her website here.

About the Composer

Michigan-born, Manhattan-based American composer Stephanie Ann Boyd (b. 1990) writes melodic music about women’s memoirs and the natural world for symphonic and chamber ensembles. Her work has been performed in nearly all 50 states and has been commissioned by musicians and organizations in 37 countries. Boyd’s five ballets include works choreographed by New York City Ballet principal dancers Lauren Lovette, Ashley Bouder, NYCB soloist Peter Walker, and XAOC Contemporary Ballet’s Eryn Renee Young. Eero, a ballet commissioned by Access Contemporary Music and Open House New York, was written for the grand opening of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport. Stephanie’s music has been praised as “a racing, brassy score” (New York Times), “attractive lyricism” (Gramophone), “[with] ethereal dissonances” (Boston Globe), “[music that] didn’t let itself be eclipsed” (Texas Classical Review), “arrestingly poetic” (BMOP), and “wide ranging, imaginative” (Portland Press Herald). 

Boyd is the 2021/2022 Peoria Symphony Orchestra Composer in Residence, a position culminating in an entire concert of her works, including her violin concerto Sybil, her cantata Sheltering Voices, and a new work inspired by Betty Friedan entitled Everywoman, with Deborah Rutter, Michelle DeYoung, and Sirena Huang as soloists. The 2021/2022 season also includes the premiere of Julia Louisa Esther: a Suffragette Symphony with the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Christopher Dragon; Alleluia Olora commissioned by Astral Artists for cellist Tommy Mesa; Aurora, commissioned by the Kurganov-Finehouse Duo, and others. 

Boyd’s music has been commissioned and performed by concertmasters of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the Des Moines Symphony, the Faroe Islands Symphony, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Smith Symphony, the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, and principal players in the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.  Her music has been commissioned and/or played by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the New England Conservatory Philharmonic, the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, the New York Jazzharmonic, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, the Roosevelt University Orchestra, the Eureka Ensemble, the JVL Festival Orchestra, the Texas State University Symphony, the Cremona International Academy Orchestra, the UW La Crosse Symphony, the Detroit Civic Orchestra, and the El Paso Youth Symphony. Her work has been presented by the Thalia and her Sisters concert series, the Moirae Ensemble, and Sandcastle New Music in New York City; Æpex Contemporary Music in Michigan; Juventas New Music, Collage New Music, and the New Gallery Concert Series in Boston; Cincinnati Soundbox, and others. Stephanie has worked with conductors such as Andrew Litton, Lina Gonzales, Earl Lee, Nathan Aspinall, Cliff Colnot, Gill Rose, Julian Benichou, Kristo Kondakci, and Kevin Fitzgerald.

stephanieannboyd.com