Reporter Volume 25, No.24 April 14, 1994

April concerts memorial to Yvar Mikhashoff
By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Bureau Staff
Yvar Mikhashoff, UB professor of music and a pianist and composer of
international reputation, was a man known for his many and deep ties
to composers and performers around the world.
Mikhashoff died here in September. On Sunday, April 17, his friends
and colleagues will come together in Buffalo from as far away as
Europe and Japan to present two concerts in celebration of what
cellist Robert Black calls "his playing, his music, his generosity of
spirit and his joyous intensity of existence. "Both concerts are free
of charge and open to the public.
The first concert, "Yvar Mikhashoff: A Celebration in Music," will
take place at 2 p.m. in Slee Concert Hall. The second, "Pianorama for
Yvar," will take place at 6:30 p.m. at Hallwalls Center for
Contemporary Arts, 2495 Main St., Buffalo.
Performers will include Black, Poul Ruders, Nils Vigeland, Aki
Takahashi, Anthony de Mare, Isabelle Ganz, Thomas Halpin, Wayne
Crouse, Luk', Stephen Manes, Michael Pugliese, Frances Marie Uitti,
Paul Schmidt, Amy Williams, Jan Williams and Amy Winn.
The Slee Hall concert will open with a recording of Mikhashoff
performing Charles Ives' 1914 composition, "The Alcotts," and will
close with a recording of his performance of a 1984 Conlon Nancarrow
tango.
The program also will include a performance by Manes of Mikhashoff's
recent transcription of Tchaikovsky's "Apparition Scene from 'Pique
Dame' and selections from Mikhashoff's 1974 work, "The Windwife,"
performed by an ensemble conducted by Erik Oprogram are works by John
Cage, Christopher Fox, James Sellars, Nils Vigeland, Louis Andriesson
and Poul Ruders.
The Hallwalls concert will be presented in two parts. The first
features a small selection from Mikhashoff's "Tango Collection," a
group of 125 short tangos written for him by an illustrious list of
composers. The second part includes "Recordando a Yvar" by Spanish
composer Oscar Muo wrote the piece this year in memory of Mikhashoff.
Mikhashoff's own work, "Mikhachelle" performed by Takahashi, and David
Felder's "Rocket Summer," performed by Manes, are also on the program,
along with several Mikhashoff collaborations.
 Mikhashoff delighted, amazed and often startled audiences here and
abroad for more than two decades with his virtuosi piano performances
and compositions of new music for piano.
As a performer, he held international stature and his colleagues and
collaborators were among some of the world's most distinguished
musicians. As a teacher, he could count among his former students some
of the field's finest pianists and composers of new music.
Through the North American New Music Festival, which he founded and
directed, Mikhashoff promoted hundreds of musical artists representing
a wide range of aesthetic sensibilities in the field. His festival
attracted some of the finest artists in the worldQCage, Andriesson,
Takahashi, James Sellars, Frederic Rzewski and Joel Chabade, to name a
very few.
In a written description of the Slee Hall concert, Nils Vigeland says,
"throughout the program run, crisscrossing, relationships of composers
and performers brought together by their common friendship with Yvar."
This "ring of friendships," says Vigeland, embraced a whole generation
of young English composers, a steady stream of American composers whom
Mikhashoff introduced to new audiences worldwide, and a host of gifted
performers whom he involved in his own work and in that of others
throughout his lifetime.
For further information on the concerts, call 883-4567.