Award-Winning Pianist Gabriel Merrill-Steskal to Perform a Program of Piano Miniatures at Loyola University
NEW ORLEANS – In a bit of a twist on the typical piano concert, Gabriel Merrill-Steskal will delight audiences with a selection of piano miniatures by American composers, including Loyola’s own William Horne, when he comes to Roussel Hall at 3 p.m. on Oct. 20.
Merrill-Steskal will perform more than a dozen miniatures – none of which is longer than five minutes – at the free, 90-minute concert. The program features American pieces from the past 100 years, with some as recent as the last year or two. In contrast, a lot of piano repertoire is European and hundreds of years old, Merrill-Steskal said.
“I think it’s going to be engaging and interesting,” said Merrill-Steskal, who is from Ellensburg, Wash., and will graduate from the University of Michigan in May with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. “A lot of times when people go to a piano concert with long pieces, it can be boring for some. It’s nice to have a bunch of bite-sized pieces with a lot of variety.”
The program features six diverse composers: Chick Corea, Amy Beach, William Horne, Michael Kropf, Samuel Barber and William Bolcom. For example, Beach composed and published the first symphony by an American woman in the late 19th Century, whereas Corea was a well-known jazz pianist who began his professional career in the 1960s.
Horne, who is a professor emeritus of theory and composition at Loyola, knows Merrill-Steskal through Logan Skelton, one of the young pianist’s professors at Michigan. Skelton, who Horne called one of the most influential piano teachers in the country, earned his undergraduate degree in piano from Loyola.
Through that relationship, Merrill-Steskal recorded four of Horne’s preludes two summers ago at Blue Griffin Recording in Lansing, Mich. Earlier, acclaimed local pianist Peter Collins premiered several of Horne’s preludes at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
When Merrill-Steskal sought venues where he could perform a piano miniatures concert, he said he thought Loyola would be a natural choice.
“Loyola brings acclaimed pianists to play here each year. I think Gabe is absolutely brilliant,” Horne said of Merrill-Steskal. “His understanding of music is very rare, and I expect him to go far in this world.”
As a performer, Merrill-Steskal has won awards in international competitions on both piano and fortepiano, including the Seattle International Piano Competition, Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, and SFZP International Fortepiano Competition. He recently was a fellow at the Gilmore piano festival and Pianofest in the Hamptons in New York.
For more information, visit https://www.loyno.edu/events/oct-20-2024_guest-piano-recital-american-piano-miniatures.
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