Charles Foreman- Senior Instructor – Piano
Pianist Charles Foreman was born near Chicago, where he was a scholarship student of Rudolph Reuter at the American Conservatory. His undergraduate degree, awarded with high distinction, is from Indiana University, where he studied piano with Abbey Simon and Joseph Battista and conducting with Julius Herford and Fiora Contino. He also holds the Artist Diploma and Master of Music degrees from the University of Toronto, where he studied with Anton Kuerti and Katharina Wolpe. Foreman has done postgraduate work with William Aide, and also at the Juilliard School with Abbey Simon.
Foreman made his debut in 1972 with the Chicago Civic Orchestra conducted by David Gilbert, playing the Brahms B-flat Concerto. Since then, he has won prizes in Canadian and U.S. piano competitions, received two Canada Council grants for study and performance in Europe, performed over 30 times with orchestras in North America (including eight repeat engagements with the Calgary Philharmonic), under conductors such as Edmond Agopian, Mario Bernardi, Boris Brott, Rolf Bertsch, Stephen Franse, Stewart Grant, Arpad Joo, and Gerhardt Zimmermann, and played over 700 solo and chamber recitals in Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, and the U.S. He has been equally praised for his superb musicianship, his formidable technique, his vast repertoire, and his imaginative programming. He has premiered works by composers as diverse as Istvan Anhalt, George Crumb, Stewart Grant, Oskar Morawetz, Violet Archer, Gerhard Wuensch, and William Jordan. His multi-faceted career has included professional broadcasting, professional acting, musical direction, and arts administration.
Professor of piano at the University of Calgary from 1973 – 2009, Foreman also served at various times as Assistant Dean of Fine Arts and as Head of the Performance Area, and he held key roles in establishing the Department of Music’s innovative master classes and in founding the University’s Celebration Series. His close ties with virtually every arts organization in Alberta as well as many national and international institutions have made him sought-after as a giver of master classes and workshops, and as a juror. His students continue to win prizes in local, regional, national and international competitions. Foreman was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2002, and, since 2008, is a faculty member of the Mount Royal University Conservatory. He was appointed Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Calgary in May, 2010.
As a chamber musician, Charles Foreman has performed repeatedly with artists such as Edmond Agopian, Robert Aitken, Allison Angelo, Donald Bell, Jeremy Brown, James Campbell, Karen Cargill, Jonathan Crow, Stephen Dann, Yegor Dyachkov, Anthony Elliott, Lea Foli, Phil Hansen, Phyllis Mailing, Jason Nedecky, János Négyesy, Wendy Nielsen, Päivikki Nykter, Per Øien, Anita Dusevic Oliva, Carol Plantamura, Gerald Stanick, Olivier Thouin, Kathleen van Mourik, Carol Wincenc, and Tanya Dusevic Witek. In 1982, he won the Canada Music Council Award for best recorded chamber music with Aitken and Øien. He was a founding member of the Shawnigan Trio from 1990 to 1998, concertizing extensively in Germany to rave reviews, and making two recordings for Antes Edition.
Indeed, Foreman’s discography is continually growing, and includes four solo albums and five duo albums (with violinist Edmond Agopian, baritone Donald Bell, saxophonist Jeremy Brown, pianist Kathleen van Mourik, and flautist Tanya Dusevic Witek). In addition, Foreman has appeared as both artist and host on radio and television stations in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
He began a cycle of the complete works of Chopin for solo piano in the fall of 2006, and became the first Canadian pianist ever to complete the cycle in March, 2009. In 2001, Foreman concluded his “Sounds of a Century” project, ten recitals of twentieth-century piano music, one for each decade. He completed his – and Calgary’s – first cycle of the thirty-two Beethoven piano sonatas in 2005, to sold-out houses and standing ovations. He is also currently Artistic Director of the Mountain View International Festival of Song, Canada’s first summer music workshop and festival to focus primarily on art song, and of the Mountain View Connection, Calgary’s only concert series dedicated to presenting young professional classical musicians in recital. Charles Foreman will complete his performances of the complete cycle of Beethoven Piano Sonatas for the second time in 2016 for Mountain View.
Kara Friesen – Voice, Piano
