The New York State Performing Arts Center (Albany) and Southern Vermont College hosted concerts in March and April featuring pianist LINCOLN MAYORGA, soprano Ida Faiella, and violinist Barry Finclair, the trio known as L'Ensemble.

The concert pair of March 25-26 featured music of prominent film composers Henry Mancini, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ennio Morricone, and John Williams. A new composition by LINCOLN MAYORGA, "Louis in New Orleans", was premiered April 29-30. This work, based on a memoir of Louis Armstrong about his youth in New Orleans, is written in the traditional jazz style of the 1920s. Jazz bassist Ed Greene joined L'Ensemble for this piece.

In March, LINCOLN MAYORGA did a week-long residency at Schenectady Community College, in which he lectured and taught in both master classes and private lessons, covering a wide range of repertoire from classical to jazz. On March 15, he performed a solo piano recital at the college, Classical Roots of American Popular Music.

Lincoln with piano students at Schenectady Community College

On April 2, LINCOLN MAYORGA was featured soloist with the Harmonie Ensemble under conductor Steven Richman, in a Gershwin concert at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City. A large group of Gershwin's piano solos and songs were performed by pianist Mayorga. The program concluded with Rhapsody in Blue in the original Paul Whiteman jazz band arrangement by Ferde Grofe. With the twenty-five musicians of the orchestra, Mayorga was featured soloist, along with clarinetist Alfred Gallodoro, a veteran of the Whiteman orchestra in the thirties, and Toscanini's NBC Symphony in the forties. Gallodoro turns 93 this year.

Lincoln Mayorga and Al Gallodoro take a bow for their "Rhapsody in Blue."

"Nobody plays this repertoire with Mayorga's scintillating flair, except maybe Gershwin!"
--- Jed Distler, The Gramophone

Saturday evening, May 6 at 8 PM, Sheri Bauer Mayorga, along with pianist LINCOLN MAYORGA, will present "American Snapshots -- Two Hundred Years of American Music" at the Hudson Opera House, Hudson, New York. The program includes music ranging from eighteenth century folk, through Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael, Phil Ochs, and Randy Newman -- a thread of American social and political history over three centuries. For ticket information phone the Hudson Opera House at 518-822-1438, 327 Warren Street in Hudson.

For additional LINCOLN MAYORGA information, please visit www.lincolnmayorga.com.