In conjunction with Prof. Tim Olsen's "Music in the 20th and 21st Centuries" course, pianist Samuel Oram will offer a recital of 20th century masterworks on Thursday, March 3 at noon. The free performance will take place in Emerson Auditorium in the Taylor Music Center. The program includes several of Claude Debussy's piano preludes, Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces, as well as Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7. The program concludes with Steve Reich's landmark 1967 Piano Phase, for which Oram will be joined by Prof. Olsen on the piano. Masks are required and social distancing is encouraged.
Lauded for his “stunning artistry” in “the way he uses virtuosity for musical coherence and precise expression” (Pittsburgh Tribune), Samuel Oram has won accolades as a pianist and chamber musician on three continents. A frequent soloist, he has performed with orchestras under Raphael Alpermann, Philippe Entremont, and Juan-Pablo Izquierdo. An enthusiastic advocate of new music, he has collaborated with composers Juliana Hall and John Harbison. Oram has performed at the Kennedy Center, Jordan Hall, Carnegie Music Hall, Jüdische Volkshochschule in Berlin, National Concert Hall in Taipei, and National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) in Kaoshiung. A native of Boston, Oram began to perform widely as the result of awards including the First and Solo Prizes in the Corpus Christi International Competition, First Prize in the Dora Zaslavsky Koch Concerto Competition at the Manhattan School, and Honorable Mention in the International Wideman Competition. His teachers have included Ursula Oppens, Jeffrey Cohen, Tamás Ungár, and Alan Smith. He completed his doctoral degree at the University of Southern California, where he worked for three years as the studio pianist for former NY Phil concertmaster Glenn Dicterow. He recently lived in Germany for one year, where he served as a repetiteur for the Berlin Philharmonic Choir. Oram currently teaches piano as an Affiliate Artist at Union.
