'In The Footsteps Of Chopin' Virtual Discussion to Take Place With Dr. Alan Walker And Daniel Vnukowski

Artistic Director of Collingwood Summer Music Festival Daniel Vnukowski will host Summer Solstice Series this month. The four-part presentation will include Celebrating Robert Burns with R.H. Thomson and Mr. Vnukowski (June 16, 7 p.m. EDT); a Schubert solo piano recital by Mr. Vnukowski (June 19, 3 p.m. EDT); In The Footsteps of Chopin, a discussion with Dr. Alan Walker and Mr. Vnukowski (June 23, 7 p.m. EDT); and, finally, Mr. Vnukowski in a Chopin solo piano recital (June 26, 3 p.m. EDT).

A highlight of the series is the third event In the Footsteps of Chopin, a 50-minute virtual discussion on Wednesday, June 23 at 7 p.m. EDT, featuring the eminently distinguished musicologist Dr. Alan Walker. Mr. Vnukowski and Dr. Walker will be following in the footsteps of Chopin and covering important topics such as aesthetics, Polish vernacular, and interpretation as the tail-end of the composing process. Lively banter between Mr. Vnukowski and Mr. Walker will be interspersed with numerous recorded music excerpts by renowned Chopin interpreters, such as Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Artur Rubinstein. "In this particular discussion, I'll be playing the role of a somewhat obnoxious 19th-century German music critic who despises Chopin's works," says Mr. Vnukowski. "All in good humor and tongue-in-cheek, but a subtle way to get closer to the depths of Chopin's musical genius." There will also be a discussion on the unique journey that led Dr. Walker to a treasure trove of documents buried within the archives in Warsaw, his personal relationship with the music of Chopin, and a few side notes from some of the 19th century music critics who held Chopin in contempt.

The event is free, but requires an RSVP and will be followed by a live Q & A that invites participants to ask questions. To join the free event, please RSVP here.

Dr. Walker's recent landmark book Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times has established him as a leading authority on Chopin and his time, earning praise in such publications as the New York Times, which cited the work as a Book Review Editors' Choice; The Sunday Times (U.K.) Classical Music Book of 2018, and The Economist's Best Books of 2018.

Mr. Vnukowski will also be presenting "Celebrating the Poetry of Robert Burns," together with the renowned Canadian television actor R.H. Thomson on Wednesday, June 16, 2021, at 7 p.m. EDT. He will perform an array of solo piano excerpts, including the music of J.S. Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, and Led Zeppelin, each of which underscores the poetry's text. 100% of the funds raised from this event will go towards the Actors' Fund of Canada. For the Schubert solo recital, Saturday, June 19, 3 p.m. EDT Mr. Vnukowski will be performing the composer's Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D960 and to conclude the series, Mr. Vnukowski will play Nocturnes, Waltzes, and Ballades by Chopin on Saturday, June 26, 3 p.m. EDT. For further information visit here.

With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Polish-Canadian pianist Daniel Vnukowski's virtual live streaming project from home has made waves internationally, and reached over half a million viewers. Mr. Vnukowski wrote an engaging piece for the Los Angeles Times about his work during this period which begins: "As a concert pianist the stage is my life. But the pandemic taught me to love the livestream" "This spirit of innovation is the driving force behind many of the creative projects." says Mr. Vnukowski. "I've scheduled at my summer music festival this year: embracing technology to create ravishing, new artistic expressions."
The livestreams have been endorsed by Fazioli Pianoforte and featured on NPR Radio, Classical FM, Ludwig Van Toronto, and BBC Music Magazine playlists.

Mr. Vnukowski (pronounced Vnoo-koff-skee) has toured throughout Europe, North America, South America, and Asia. He has performed with many orchestras, including the Polish Radio Orchestra, Orchestra Now (TON), Sinfonia Varsovia, Windsor Symphony, Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana, Sinfonia Iuventus, Poznan Philharmonic, and Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic with conductors such as Leon Botstein, Ariel Zuckermann, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Alain Trudel, Jacek Kasprzyk, and David Amos.

Mr. Vnukowski has taken part in numerous international festivals such as Chopin and his Europe in Warsaw, Poland; Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, and Chopiniana in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has participated in lectures at universities and institutes around the world, including University of California San Diego, Georgian Triangle Lifelong Learning Institute, Queens College CUNY, University of Toronto, University of Windsor, and Tsinghua University in Beijing. In 2020, Mr. Vnukowski continues his cross-continental lecture recital series on Holocaust music at universities throughout the country, which is also available in a virtual setting.

Since 2019, Mr. Vnukowski has frequently performed the music of Karol Rathaus, a Weimar-era composer whose music came to his attention in 2016 through his work with The exil.arte Center, a Vienna-based organization whose mission is to restore "degenerate" music. In February 2019, Mr. Vnukowski performed the composer's Piano Concerto with The Orchestra Now conducted by Leon Botstein, as part of a Rathaus Festival presented by the Copland School of Music at Queens College, where Rathaus was on faculty. He made his sold-out Weill Hall recital debut at Carnegie Hall with a program that included the composer's Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 20.

For these performances, Mr. Vnukowski was called "a formidable pianist" (ConcertoNet) and "a pianist to watch" (New York Classical Review). His latest recording of the solo piano music of Karol Rathaus featured world-premiere recordings and garnered many positive reviews: "Vnukowski plays with sympathetic understanding" - Limelight Magazine (July 2019); "Vnukowski communicates the emotions within the music." - Fanfare Magazine (Issue 43:1 - Sept/Oct 2019); "played to the hilt" - American Record Guide (July/August 2019). This album was also featured in many interviews during a cross-country radio tour on various U.S. radio stations such as NPR, TPR, WBAA, and WOSU. Mr. Vnukowski will also be featured in a documentary on Karol Rathaus produced by Lev Deych & Michael Haas.

Dedicated to giving back to the country that nurtured him as an artist, Mr. Vnukowski was awarded a grant from the Canadian & Ontario Arts Councils to perform outreach concerts for remote, rural communities in Canada together with five other pianists in a project entitled "Piano Six - New Generation". In October 2019, Mr. Vnukowski hosted a highly acclaimed gala concert in collaboration with Music Toronto at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts to celebrate the program's first year of touring. This event included a specially commissioned work by Kevin Lau written for six pianists. Visit PianoSix.com for more information.

That same year, Mr. Vnukowski performed a cross-country, community outreach tour throughout Canada from Fort Nelson, B.C. to Corner Brook, NL. The tour began with a visit to Canada's Western provinces, organized by Piano Six Artists and ended later that year with a tour of Canada's Atlantic provinces - Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, organized by Debut Atlantic. In November 2019, Mr. Vnukowski also performed in the first-ever fundraiser for the Africville Museum in Halifax, NS., featuring the music of Black composers such as Florence B. Price, Zenobia P. Perry, Art Tatum, and Duke Ellington.

Mr. Vnukowski also founded the Collingwood Summer Music Festival in 2019 to bring over 100 high caliber performers to the charming Southern Georgian Bay area in Ontario each summer. The festival will celebrate its second season in 2021. Visit CollingwoodFestival.com for more information.

Mr. Vnukowski was trained at the Lake Como International Piano Academy in Italy, where he worked with distinguished artists such as Dmitri Bashkirov, Menahem Pressler, Claude Frank, Fou Ts'ong, John Perry, and William Grant Naboré; at the Peabody Institute of Baltimore under the guidance of Leon Fleisher; and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London with Graham Johnson and Ronan O'Hora.

Dr. Alan Walker was born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire. He received an LGSM certificate in 1949, ARCM in 1950, a Bachelor of Music from University of Durham in 1956, and a Doctor of Music in 1965. Between 1957 and 1960 he studied privately with Hans Keller, an association which he has always acknowledged as formative. These lessons were resumed, albeit irregularly, once Mr. Walker joined Mr. Keller at the BBC in 1961.

From 1958 to 1961 Mr. Walker lectured at the Guildhall School of Music, having studied piano there with Alfred Nieman, noted for teaching improvisational techniques. He also taught at the University of London from 1954 to 1960. Mr. Walker worked at the BBC Radio Music Division as a producer between 1961 and 1971. Seeking to return to his "first love," teaching, he gave up radio production and took an appointment as Professor of Music at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he chaired the Department of Music from 1971 to 1980, and from 1989 to 1995. In 1981, he was responsible for the establishment at McMaster of the first graduate program in music criticism in Canada. Since 1995, he has been Professor Emeritus at McMaster. From 1984 to 1987, he was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Music at City University in London.

His three-volume biography of Franz Liszt, which took him 25 years to complete, has been very influential. Common adjectives attached to the work include "monumental" and "magisterial," and it is said to have "unearthed much new material and provided a strong stimulus for further research." Mr. Walker himself says that when he found, as a BBC producer compiling notes for program announcers, that "there wasn't a decent book in English on Liszt," he eventually decided to write one himself, but was determined "not to make a major statement that couldn't be supported by documents ... and because Liszt himself was a traveler the archives were everywhere." The first volume won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in biography for 1983 and best book on music from the Yorkshire Post Newspapers in 1984. The three-book series was given the Royal Philharmonic Society Book Award in 1998.

Mr. Walker has also written substantially about Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin, and continues to lecture in Canada, the US, and UK on all three musicians. In October 2018 he brought to completion a large-scale biography of Fryderyk Chopin, a book on which he worked for ten years. It has been described as "a biographical masterpiece", and was named Classical Music Book of the Year by the Sunday Times of London. James Penrose in The New Criterion wrote: "With Liszt, and now Fryderyk Chopin so well cared for, one can but hope that Walker will try for the hat trick."

Mr. Walker lives in Ancaster, Ontario. He is director of "The Great Romantics," an annual festival in Hamilton, Ontario.

Robert Holmes R.H. Thomson is a celebrated Canadian television, film, and stage actor. With a career spanning five decades he remains a regular presence on Canadian movie screens and television. He has received two Gemini Awards, one in 1989 for Glory Enough for All, and one for If You Could See What I Hear, in 1982. In 2015 he was granted the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement in Theatre. Eric Peterson performed in his honor at the gala celebrating the laureates at the National Arts Centre. In 2018 he received the Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor in Drama for Anne with an E.

Mr. Thomson was born in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and studied at the University of Toronto and the National Theatre School. His own play The Lost Boys was staged at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in March 2000 and at Canadian Stage in February 2002. He has also hosted programming for CBC Radio and CBC Television. Mr. Thomson has portrayed a number of historical figures including Samuel Lount, Edsel Ford, Dr. Frederick Banting, Duncan Campbell Scott, Mitchell Sharp, and James Cross. In 2010, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.

Mr. Thomson has had a long-standing interest in Canada's military and war veterans. In 1995 he narrated a 3-part documentary series about Canada's involvement in international conflicts. In 2010, the Government of Canada honored Thomson for this effort with a Minister of Veterans Affairs Commendation.

Thomson is married with two sons, Macintosh and Andrew.