Creole Rhythm: Bio
Sarah Vanegas - Pianist
Un, dos, tres…y con entusiasmo! A native of Oregon, Sarah Vanegas has also been immersed in Latin American cultures long enough to feel at home in South America. In a culture where music dominates existence, rhythm drives the feet and possesses the hips; it was only natural for Vanegas to move the fiesta onto the piano.
Syncopated ragtime first caught her attention at an early age and led her to mentors Frank French and Scott Kirby who introduced her to the music of Brazil, Cuba and Terra Verde. That match awakened a passionate connection with the world of Latin American piano—one that Sarah delights in sharing with audiences. Her interpretation has been described as, “grace and beauty, exhilarating, authentic and moving.”
Most recently, Sarah has embarked on a Colombian piano project giving life to scores she recovered from the National Library in Bogotá, Colombia. Many of these musical gems have lain silent and nearly forgotten for decades. Sarah has made it a mission to take this music out of the archives and into the hearts of listeners both near and far.
Mrs. Vanegas graduated from Oregon State University and is a public health nutritionist in Davis, California where she resides with her husband.
Alexandre Dias - Pianist, Historian
Alexandre Dias was born in Brasília, Brazil, and has had a strong interest for music since an early age. He began his classical piano studies at the age of ten, and his main teachers were Elza Kazuko Gushikem and Neusa França. At the age of 14 he began his most long-standing endeavour: to list and collect the complete recordings of Ernesto Nazareth's works, which currently surpass 2000. Eventually he also put together his complete scores, and, for the first time in history, reviewed a complete edition of Nazareth’s works, which are now available for free at www.ernestonazareth.com.br . In 2007 he began to systematically study Ernesto Nazareth’s works, by recording his most unknown pieces at home, and writing essays about each (http://sovacodecobra.uol.com.br/2007/03/ernesto-nazareth-inedito/) . Alexandre performs regularly in Brasília, and was one of the finalists of the 1st International Piano Competition Grieg-Nepomuceno. His plans include a recording and a cycle of recitals dedicated to Ernesto Nazareth’s complete works.
Frank French - Pianist, Composer
How does one categorize a musician immersed in European Classical traditions from the time of Bach to the 20th Century, but also intensely responsive to the music of New Orelans, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil?
Frank French answers the riddle by synthesizing all these various styles into his own formulation as a pianist and composer. Although it might seem obvious that anyone born to the Rhythm and Blues of the 1950’s, growing up in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district and studying the Classics at the Conservatory of Music would likely enough emerge with such an artistic makeup, it is not as though there are no other historical parallels or models for this kind of musical life.
In earlier times the great American musical pioneer, Louis Moreau Gottschalk successfully connected the musical traditions of Europe and Africa in his most important piano compositions dating from the 1850s. It was no accident that Frank French discovered a musical affinity for Gottschalk and became a premiere interpreter of his music. In his unique one-man presentation of Gottschalk’ s life and music, French weaves musical selections in with the composer’s diary to paint a vivid picture in historical context. With Gottschalk, begins this saga of music making, composing and identifying continuing tradition and legacy that is truly Pan-American in it’s scope and outlook.
The use of the pianoforte in the way espoused by French implies a distinctive musical territory placing the sound of the Western Hemisphere properly in the larger context of World Music. In this realm the musical imagination revolves round the piano which may be coaxed like a harp in one moment, and beaten like a drum in the next. Here is expressed the contrast of genteel Romanticism and the savage emotive power evoked in a more rugged way of life. Thus is the artistic sentiment now projected onto a landscape of rough and ready ways and means. Manifest in this is the dynamic attraction of spirit to earth.
Over the past 20 years Frank French has performed and recorded this music in community concerts, educational venues, on radio and television. He has criss-crossed the globe from Europe to North America, to Australia, performing at numerous international music festivals in France, Finland, Germany and throughout North America and Oceana, from the Maine coast to the Gold Coast, from Toronto to Santiago de Cuba. His music speaks a language larger than life though his many performances and recordings.
Sophie Rivard - Violinist and Arranger
Sophie Rivard is a graduate cum Laude in Performance from McGill University. She’s been playing in professional orchestras since 1981. Among other distinguished positions, Sophie has been Orchestra Métropolitain’s principal second violin for six years and concertmaster for Orchestre Symphonique de Longueuil and both the Montréal and the Montérégie Chamber Orchestras.
Through the years, Mrs. Rivard has played with several ensembles as principal chair, mostly concertmaster. Sophie also has a flourishing career as a baroque violinist, performing chamber recitals and being invited as guest speaker for baroque music conferences and festivals in Europe, the United States and Canada. Sophie has also been invited as guest soloist with orchestras, performing solo works of the great violin repertoire.
Since 1994, Sophie has performed in many concerts and festivals and composers of new Ragtime and Terra Verde composers have arranged or written music for her, including Glenn Jenks, Scott Kirby, Frank French, Brian Keenan, Mimi Blais and Luiz Simas. In playing popular styles Sophie is known for her virtuoso playing as well as her moving expression in slower pieces.
In addition to recordings with Frank French her discography contains two C.D.s of baroque composers Buxtehude and Rameau , and volume one of Jean-Baptiste Lafrenière’s complete works with pianist Mimi Blais.
Sophie is a licensed psychotherapist and has her private practice in Beloeil, Québec, where she lives happily with her husband and three children.