DEERFIELD — A rare musical pairing is coming to The First Church of Deerfield on Sunday, Sept. 27, at 3 p.m.
In the 21st year of The Brick Church Music Series, oboist Tom Gallant will return with newcomer Wynona Wang, a pianist, for a concert that “shows the variety of music writing,” in Wang’s words.
“Italian Dance” by Madeleine Dring will kick off the performance, “a short, fun and fast … nice way to start off the concert,” Gallant said. The pair will play a sonata by Camille Saint-Saens and “Three Romances” by Robert Schumann before the first half closes with “Maria” and “Tonight” from “West Side Story.”
While Wang said the first half “is mainly about music as its own art form,” the performance takes a turn after the intermission with pieces from Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky and Henri Brod, including a piano solo.
“In the second half, there’s this feeling of storytelling,” Wang said. “When people hear the music, they not only focus on the story itself, but also it’s getting the audience into a journey. It has a very strong, specific atmosphere and mood that we’re setting up for.”
When performing alongside musicians with other instruments like the viola and clarinet, Wang said there is a risk of the piano swallowing the other instruments with its loud sound. However, when rehearsing with Gallant, her first time playing alone with an oboist, she realized that the sound of the oboe cuts through the piano, allowing her to play her instrument at full volume and capture the “intensity” of the music.
Gallant described the sound of an oboe as “quite distinct.”
At 10 years old, Gallant said, the band at his school in Chicago gave a demonstration to catch new musicians with a clear motive.
“I think that year they really needed an oboe player. … They gave a big pitch for the oboe — ‘Oh, you have to play the oboe, it’s so unusual,'” Gallant recounted, “and I fell for it.”
Unlike other woodwinds like the flute or trumpet, oboes contain a reed.
“You can have a lot of control over your own personal sound and your personal style because of that,” Gallant explained.
While Gallant and many other classical musicians carry their instruments with them to each performance, Wang must get to know a new piano at each show.
“Every different venue for me I have to build a connection to that particular piano,” Wang said. “Even though in some places their piano is not the best piano around the world, I always find something so special about that instrument. I’ve found making friends with pianos around the world is another great thing that I can have. … It’s a curse and it’s also a blessing.”
Wang met her first piano in her home city of Beijing during kindergarten, when her parents enrolled her in lessons hoping it would inspire an aptitude for math, not music.
“I didn’t start the piano knowing that I would be a pianist,” Wang remembered. “They thought if I learned to count the notes, I would learn to count the numbers.”
She continued playing and earned a spot performing in France and Italy at 10 years old.
“After the trip, I thought it would be so cool to become a pianist so that I could travel around the world, never go home, go to different hotels every night, have coffee — because I did not have coffee back in China — and try out every single restaurant in the world,” Wang said with a laugh. “That was my thought as a 10-year-old, thinking, ‘A pianist is the coolest person to be for my future when I grow up.’ … It was not so much about music.”
Although she enjoys the traveling and coffee, she said her passion for performing continues to bring her back to the keys.
“Every time when I get on stage on a good day, the magic that the feeling of performing brings to me is something that nothing else can do,” she said. “I’m building a connection to each audience member. … I’m sharing how I feel about this music, about that composer’s life story to them, and then they relate [it] to their own lives, their own emotions through the music. … I think that’s something very magical about live performance.”
Suggested donations are $20 at the door, with proceeds supporting The First Church of Deerfield. An outdoor reception will follow. Accessible parking is available toward the back of the church.
