Piano Productions, Inc.
A Grand Time | Grandissimo | Recordings | John Kozar
Piano Productions, Inc. (PPI) is a not-for-profit corporation with a sole educational mission: to encourage and promote interest in the acoustic piano and piano music through performance, recording and publishing.
Performance opportunities include the monster piano concerts, A GRAND TIME and Grandissimo, the four-piano quartet, Piano4, plus recitals, master classes and lecture-recitals, the latter under the name PianoTalk, by our publisher and Senior Editor, John Kozar.
Recordings include the solo piano works of American Impressionist Emerson Whithorne, the first live recording by Piano4, and eventually many more specially selected CDs and DVDs.
Our flagship production, A GRAND TIME, is a community-based monster piano concert first produced in 1990. Community participation is a critical ingredient to the success of A GRAND TIME. Your community and its environs are full of piano talent we will help you showcase. There is no limit to the number who may participate. We’ve had as many as 300 pianists of all ages in a single concert.
For a week, not unlike a festival, artistic director and conductor John Kozar and his team work with your pianists preparing a spectacular evening of piano music performed by the community, for the community. Dozens of productions all across the country attest to our ability to produce a truly memorable event. With full percussion (PPI’s unique contribution to the monster concert tradition), in repertoire from Bach to Schickele, A GRAND TIME is a consistent sell-out. Our motto is: ‘you supply the pianists, we do the rest’ including your guest conductor, all the music and a colorful stage production. Contact us now for our promotional DVD to see what can be your next community outreach success.
Grandissimo lives up to its name as a professional multi-piano extravaganza boasting a minimum of twelve grand pianos, five tympani, full percussion and a thrilling stage production. Grandissimo showcases the virtuoso pianists of the Grand Piano Orchestra. The GPO first appeared on the 1994 tour of Shanghai and Nanjing, China, with 25 grand pianos, fifty pianists and a dozen percussionists in 12,000 seat venues, packed to the rafters. Our ‘grandest’ production to date took place as the closing attraction of the Tsingdao (China) International Festival. The outdoor production, again with 25 grands, featured laser bounces, smoke effects, and played to an audience estimated at 80,000 people.
Pianist John Kozar discovered the music of Emerson Whithorne, the all-but-forgotten American Impressionist composer, on a 1920s piano roll during his 1980 concert tour of Australia. Whithorne’s music, very listenable and un-heard for nearly 50 years, is presented on this sole recording of any music by this composer. It features the five movement New York Days and Nights, an evocative suite that represented the US at the 1923 International Festival of Contemporary Music in Salzburg, Austria. This CD was nominated for the German ‘Grammy’ as the outstanding contemporary recording of the year.
For track listings, to hear an audio sample and to order a CD, click here.
Piano4 was formed in 2000 in tribute to the First Piano Quartet, the first ever ensemble of this configuration. During their 12 years of weekly radio broadcasts on NBC during the 1940s and ’50s, the FPQ created over four hundred 4 piano-8 hand original works, arrangements, and transcriptions for their radio shows, their 500 concerts nationally and 17 recordings. This first CD by Piano4 includes the founder, John Kozar, who toured with them for five years before reluctantly leaving the group in 2007 to establish Piano Productions Press. This recording is taken from a live concert.
For track listings, to hear an audio sample and to order a CD, please click here. For other recordings by Piano4, visit their website: www.piano4.org
Pianist/conductor John Kozar has performed in over 20 countries on 5 continents as recitalist, concerto soloist, and as conductor, mainly of opera and dance. He is also a specialist in works by American composers. His performances always include works by the likes of L.M. Gottschalk, George Gershwin, Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem and others. His lecture-recitals, under the rubric PianoTalk, have been presented in venues as varied as the QE2, the Purcell Room in London, and the Conservatoire in Paris. He has taught at several US, UK and Chinese universities, and has recorded for many radio stations abroad. He makes his home in Philadelphia.
For more information about Piano Productions, Inc., please email: info@pianoproductions.org