Jan. 27, 2002 – One of the things about Awadagin Pratt that impresses young people is that he had a choice about becoming a classical musician in general and a pianist in particular.
He might just as well have become a professional tennis player.
He didn't, of course. Which is why he's in the Virgin Islands this week, for return concerts at Tillett Gardens on Wednesday and the St. John School of the Arts on Thursday.
When he was growing up, his parents, both college professors, saw to it that he and his sister had piano lessons and violin lessons from an early age — of 6 years for piano and 9 for violin, in his case. But they also provided for the youngsters to have tennis lessons. Compared to most kids, they had an exceptional childhood in Normal, Illinois.
Still, "I was never one of those high-powered young music students who were always practicing hours and hours a day; I simply liked the music," he relates on his web site, www.awadagin.com. "I was no prodigy type. I didn't practice that much. Most of my energy was devoted to tennis."
He watched Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic on television. He listened mainly to symphonic music on the radio. "What was in my ear was the orchestral sound," he says.
But at 16, ready to begin college studies, he was offered a tennis scholarship at one school and a piano scholarship at another. He made his choice based on "the thing I couldn't live without," he says, enrolling in the University of Illinois at Urbana as a music major. There, studying both violin and piano, he came to recognize that "it was possible to have a life professionally" as a musician.
With that recognition, he decided to transfer to a music school. He was accepted at the New England Conservatory as a violinist and at the Cleveland Institute as a pianist. But the Peabody Conservatory accepted him as both — and offered a conducting program, too. So that's where he went — to graduate as the first Peabody student ever to receive performance certificates in both piano and violin and a graduate diploma in conducting.
On to international acclaim
In 1992, he won the prestigious Naumburg Piano Competition, becoming the first African-American instrumentalist to win first prize in the international competition. "I didn't go to Naumburg thinking I would win," he says. "I had no feeling for what would happen, but I felt I was prepared to represent myself well."
In 1993, he signed with Angel-EMI, with whom he continues to record on the EMI Classics label. That also was the year that he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is still his home today.
In 1994, he received another of the top accolades available to promising classical concert artists, an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Since then, he has concertized with most of the major symphony orchestras in America and many of those abroad — including in Israel and South Africa — to say nothing of playing at the White House and appearing on "Sesame Street."
One of his Peabody professors, Robert Weirich, recalls of Pratt, "He was always experimenting — things went crazy sometimes, but they were never dull. When he plays, he's one of these very rare people who make you hear a piece as if for the first time."
Virgin Islands audiences have had several opportunities in recent years to experience that for themselves. His first performance in the territory was at Island Center in 1996. Then, in 1997 and 1998, he appeared at the Reichhold Center for the Arts. He made his debut with the Arts Alive/Classics in the Garden and St. John School of the Arts series two years ago.
When they learned he was available for this season, Arts Alive producer Rhoda Tillett and School of the Arts director Ruth "Sis" Frank jumped at the chance to book him again. First, Frank explains, because "he is one of the most fabulous performers we' ve had." But also, as Tillett puts it, because "he's a true maestro, and a charmer to boot."
Frank notes that two years ago, Pratt performed in the Nazareth Lutheran Church sanctuary, because it had a baby grand piano while the School of the Arts did not. "Now that we've got our own piano, it will be wonderful to have him in our school," she said.
For both recitals, he'll play a program opening with "The Italian Ground," a work written for harpsichord by early 17th Century composer Orlando Gibbons. Works by the two composers who most influenced him as a student will follow — "Contrapunctus No. 1 from "The Art of the Fugue," BWV 1080, and the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903, by J.S. Bach; and Beethoven's Sonata in A-flat Major, Op. 110. Following intermission, he will perform the Liszt Sonata in B minor.
More than a piano man
Having pursued a career as a concert pianist, Pratt has abandoned none of his other muses. He remains a tennis enthusiast (and "has been known to play tennis up to an hour before performance time," he biography states). And he is moving toward devoting more time to playing the violin and conducting, and to playing more with chamber ensembles. Currently, he is appearing with cellist Zuill Bailey as a duo.
Last year, he was featured on the soundtrack for the film "The Caveman's Valentine." Much of the music, composed by Terence Blanchard, is for two pianos and orchestra. Pratt plays one; Blanchard, the other. (The film, described as a "neo-gothic thriller," stars Samuel L. Jackson as a paranoid classical pianist who becomes a hermit in a New York park then ventures back into society to try to solve the murder of a young man whose body is found there.) This spring, an all-Bach album Pratt recorded with the St. Lawrence String Quartet is scheduled for release.
Meanwhile, he accepts serving as a role model for young people of color as something that "comes with the territory … to show them there are more possibilities for themselves than they may have thought. My success, if you want to call it that, has proved [they] can go through the 'system' without doing everything by the book and, despite that, still reach a certain plateau."
Albuquerque is high desert country, the city ringed by the Sandia Mountains, famed for taking on a luminescent red-purple hue as the sun sets. It is "a tremendously beautiful area," he says, with the grandeur of open spaces and at the same time a sense of connectivity with the earth. "There's something about being able to see forever in the Southwest, where the land has dimension and contour to it," he adds.
Something similar could be said of the Caribbean, with the emphasis on the sea. This week, along with his two performances, Pratt is vacationing in the islands. Far from the desert, in one — actually, two — of those places where one need not choose between "the mountains" and "the shore."
Ticket information
Wednesday at 8 p.m., Tillett Gardens — Concert tickets are $30 and $25. A pre-performance dinner with concert seating at tables is an additional $30 plus bar service and gratuity. Reservations are required for dinner and strongly recommended for concert seating. They may be made by calling 775-1929, faxing to 775-9482 or e-mailing to Arts Alive.
Pratt also will appear Thursday at the St. John School of the Arts. For more information about that performance, see the St. John Source Things to do section.
