Classical distractions

One really big problem with working from home is my penchant for wandering off task. I'll be working on something and then I'm looking at my Google Reader or I'm checking my email. It happens so quickly that I'm seldom aware that I've switched.

So it wasn't surprising that I found myself back on Gabriela Montero's website looking at her concert schedule. Why? Damned if I know. She's in Waterloo, Ontario, tonight. At 7:30 p.m. she'll be on the stage at the Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas at the Perimeter Institute.

Her performance is part of the institute's Event Horizon’s Classical World Artists series, which offers this summary:

(Photo credit: Uli Webber)

Pianist Gabriela Montero's visionary interpretations and unique improvisational gifts have won her a quickly expanding audience and devoted following around the world. Recognized as a serious interpreter of the great composers of the past, Montero is one whose acclaimed performances are soulfully lyrical.

And then I find myself reading her press clippings at her site:

Boston Globe Special Inauguration Feature

''It was such a beautiful moment and such an honor to be there,'' she recalled of Inauguration Day festivities, where she played. ''But my God was it cold!''

The article is fascinating. (Read it here.) From the 10 years of disastrous lessons in Miami as a child to quitting piano and returning to Caracas and then returning to the piano and winning a full scholarship to study at London's Royal Academy of Music. I find Montero's search for an artistic sense of herself amazing.

"Montero again lost her confidence and by 2001, she was living in Montreal, raising her first daughter, and planning a new career in psychology. Then Argerich, the great Argentine pianist, passed through town. Montero paid her a visit to get some career advice. It turned out Argerich had little patience for Montero's new ideas about psychology school. Instead, she insisted that Montero play for her. Montero agreed, reluctantly, and met Argerich the next night at Montreal's Place des Arts at 1:30 in the morning. She began with some Beethoven and Schumann, and then finally summoned the courage to improvise what she called a musical portrait of Argerich. When she finished some 20 minutes later, Argerich was speechless. 'She said "Gabrielita, why doesn't anybody know about this!",' Montero recalled. 'She was delighted like a little girl.' "

It was so surprising to find out that not only does she live in Massachusetts with her two daughters and her mother, but she performed with Itzhak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma and Anthony McGill at Barack Obama's inauguration.

Enough distractions. I've got to get back to work.