David will join renowned pianist Emanuel Ax as they play the world premiere of
Dimitri Yanov-Yanovsky’s “Three Worlds for Two Pianos” at Chicago Piano Day on May 27. Here are all the details from Chicagonow.com

Chicago Piano Day 2012: Save the Date.

By Carole Kuhrt Brewer

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association (CSOA) has proclaimed Sunday, May 27, 2012 as Chicago Piano Day. Piano Day, will feature a roster of FREE events including recitals, films, demonstrations, lectures and piano lessons at Symphony Center.

The day, hosted by actor and accomplished amateur pianist David Hyde Pierce, will kick off at 1 p.m. with Pierce joined by Emanuel Ax performing the world premiere of Dimitri Yanov-Yanovsky’s “Three Worlds for Two Pianos“.

Following that, there will be a series of free recitals on the Armour Stage, which will include appearances from Jorge Federico Osorio, Jeremy Denk, Reginald Robinson, Marc-André Hamelin, Orli Shaham, Valentina Lisitsa, Bill Charlap, Renee Rosnes and others.

Lectures and seminars will take place in Grainger Ballroom. They will include a Q&A with Emanuel Ax and Martha Gilmer, the CSO’s vice president for artistic planning and audience development; a Classic Encounter-style presentation by WXRT’s Teri Hemmert on the piano in rock; a performance by pianist Jonathan Biss; and a session with Franz Mohr, the celebrated former chief concert technician for Steinway and Sons, and the CSO’s piano technicians.

Buntrock Hall will host a mini piano film festival curated by the Chicago International Music and Movies Festival, including one silent film with live piano accompaniment.

Throughout the afternoon in the Rotunda, the Illinois State Music Teachers Association will lead “first piano lessons” for new music students of all ages. (Registration for free lessons will be available soon).

Chicago Piano Day is part of a three-week, Keys to the City Piano Festival, that will showcase the varied facets of the piano in genres ranging from classical to jazz through a series of paid and free events from May 23 to June 12.

Curated by world renowned pianist Emanuel Ax, the festival will span all CSOA series from Symphony Center Presents (SCP) presentations to programs of the Institute for Learning, Access and Training to concerts featured on the CSO’s subscription series. For a complete listing of events go to Keys to the City Piano Festival.

Location.

Symphony Center is located at 220 S. Michigan Ave.

Check out these fantastic photos of the cast and creatives of David’s latest project The Landing, courtesy of Broadwayworld.com.

Note: Tickets go on sale to non-Vineyard Theatre members on May 1st. They will be limited, so act quickly! Thanks to Vineyard Theatre for the info.

David with John Kander, Greg Pierce, Paul Anthony Stewart, Jake Bennett Siegfried, Julia Murney, David Loud, Walter Bobbie

The Landing cast – David with Paul Anthony Stewart, Jake Bennett Siegfried, and Julia Murney

and finally a cool pic of David on his own

Learn more about The Landing at vineyardtheatre.org

Walter Bobbie Will Stage John Kander-Greg Pierce Musical The Landing, With Julia Murney and David Hyde Pierce

By Kenneth Jones
12 Apr 2012

The Vineyard Theatre’s Developmental Lab of The Landing, the new triptych musical by composer John Kander, with book and lyrics by Greg Pierce, will be directed by Walter Bobbie.

Julia Murney, David Hyde Pierce and Paul Anthony Stewart will star in the May 15-June 3 test of the material Off-Broadway.

The work by Tony Award winner Kander (Chicago, Cabaret, Kiss of the Spider Woman) and playwright/fiction writer Pierce (Slowgirl) “is a beautiful and haunting musical, comprised of three distinct and gripping stories,” according to Vineyard, which informed its subscribers of the show’s casting and creative team via mail on April 12.

This is Kander’s first full new theatre collaboration with another writer since the passing of his long-time collaborator Fred Ebb in 2004. Read more about the Broadway musicals of John Kander in the Playbill Vault. Hyde Pierce (who is Greg Pierce’s uncle) won a Tony for starring in Kander and Ebb’s Curtains. He also starred in Broadway’s Spamalot, La Bete, Accent on Youth and more. His most recent Off-Broadway gig was the new play Close Up Space for Manhattan Theatre Club.

Murney’s credits include Broadway’s Wicked and Off-Broadway’s The Wild Party.

Stewart appeared in Broadway’s The People in the Picture and the most recent Fiddler on the Roof.

Vineyard’s Lab program is “designed to give artists and Vineyard members the chance to experience the birth of a new work together.” Critics are not invited to these small-scale public presentations, which seek to provide “a safe space for a creative team to launch a new work-in-progress.”

The performances will be Tuesdays at 7 PM, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 3 PM and 8 PM, Sundays at 3 PM and 7 PM.

Kander’s relationship with The Vineyard dates back to 1987 with the theatre’s revival of the Kander and Ebb musical Flora The Red Menace. Most recently, Vineyard Theatre presented the world premiere of Kander and Ebb’s musical The Scottsboro Boys, with book by David Thompson, in March 2010. It moved to Broadway and earned 12 Tony Award nominations.

Greg Pierce is a playwright and fiction writer. His stage adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (co-written with director Stephen Earnhart) premiered at The Ohio Theatre in New York City, and was performed at the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival. His plays include Slowgirl, Kickstop, Odyssey Room, Smack the Wagon and The Suburbanoids.

Bobbie won the Best Direction Tony Award for the hit revival of Chicago in 1997. He also directed Broadway’s Venus in Fur (also Off-Broadway), Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, High Fidelity, Sweet Charity and Footloose.

The Vineyard, an Off-Broadway resident not-for-profit theatre, presents at 108 E. 15 Street.

For more information about The Vineyard, visit vineyardtheatre.org.

This Saturday, April 14th, David will help out his old high school music teacher Allan Dennis (Dr D) when he appears at the Midwest Young Artists’ (MYA) benefit in Chicago. Here are two articles. The first is from Time Out Chicago. The second is a lovely entry in the MYA blog from Dr Dennis’ wife. Have to say I heartily agree with her sentiments. Wonderful to see David give his time and support to the next generation of musicians.

Midwest Young Artists 7th Annual Benefit | Concert preview

Frasier star and former pupil David Hyde Pierce pops in to help Allan Dennis raise money for his Midwest Young Artists.
By Doyle Armbrust

Sometimes opportunity means being in the right hallway at the right time. Midwest Young Artists founder and executive director Allan Dennis bumped into former student David Hyde Pierce backstage at Ravinia last summer. It led to a hug, and then to the Tony- and Emmy-winning actor agreeing to host the music school’s annual benefit.

“I asked him to speak and, true to his caring and giving nature, he agreed,” Dennis tells us via e-mail. The good news is that Pierce’s notable elocution skills will not be all he shares on stage. Joined by MYA’s VX Studio Vocal Ensemble, the actor-cum-pianist is set to revive his role as Sir Robin from Spamalot, performing “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway.”

Dennis, beloved conductor of MYA’s Concert and Symphony Orchestras, knew there was something unique about Pierce from his days at Saratoga Springs High School, in New York. “I remember his smirk when we were rehearsing Beethoven and I missed a tempo. He never had to say anything. He just looked at me, ” he recalls.

Pierce’s talent and celebrity will help garner support for MYA’s longtime commitment to financial aid for underserved children in its eight youth orchestras, four choral ensembles, wind symphony, jazz program and 60 chamber ensembles. When asked what he hopes donors will take away from the event, the convivial conductor says, “I hope they see David and MYA as related, and are willing to support creativity.”

Opera & Classical
Exmoor Country Club; Sat 14
April 12, 2012

Why is David Hyde Pierce Coming to MYA’s April 14 Benefit?
Posted by Mrs. D at Wednesday, April 04, 2012

David Hyde Pierce (born April 3, 1959) is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for playing the psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the NBC sitcom Frasier, for which he won four Emmy Awards during the series’ run. Why would he fly to Chicago to make an appearance at a music school benefit? What’s the connection?

David may be a famous actor, but he is also a musician, and for Dr. D, Founder and Director of MYA, who rarely watches television (except football games) and never caught an episode of Frasier, he is known as a classical pianist who soloed with the high school orchestra in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he taught years ago. The piece was Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, and even back then, he was a huge talent. Reconnecting recently at a Ravinia performance, David confirmed that he found acting easier than practicing hours and hours to be a classical pianist.

What a successful career, and what a wonderful person to come to Chicago for MYA’s event, paying his own way, because he believes in our mission and the value of arts in our society. We are most grateful that in addition to his appearance at the benefit, performing “You Won’t Succeed On Broadway” from Spamalot, with MYA’s VX Studio Vocal Ensemble and members of our Big Band, David will also be rehearsing a movement from Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Symphony Orchestra that afternoon. What an act of kindness, surely to inspire our students.

It’s David’s 53rd birthday today. DHP.org would like to wish him a very happy birthday and all the best for the coming year.

‘A Night at Sardi’s’ is an annual celebrity musical revue and awards dinner to benefit the care, support and research efforts of the Alzheimer’s Association. This year’s theme was ‘Showstoppers’. David sang his big number from Spamalot – ‘You Won’t Succeed on Broadway’.

We found a couple of videos. First up ‘A Night at Sardi’s’ arrivals. David is interviewed at 5:30.

And before the event David was interviewed on Good Day LA

David Hyde Pierce Raises Money For Alzheimer’s: MyFoxLA.com

David voiced the audio book of Norton Juster’s 1961 children’s classic
The Phantom Tollbooth, and was nominated for a Grammy in 2010 for the category ‘Best Spoken Word Album for Children’.

It’s really worth visiting The Phantom Tollbooth turns 50 website to read more about the project and to view some of Jules Feiffer’s delightful illustrations. We’ll be looking out for the film and the interview with David when it’s released.

Double click on pics for full size

Here’s an interview with David in the New York Times where he explains his Importance of Being Earnest in the style of Guys and Dolls concept. Highly intriguing.

Interesting point he makes about the similarity in the language of the two plays. This will be one to watch.

Running Wilde: A Gangster Version of ‘Earnest,’ Directed by David Hyde Pierce
By DAVE ITZKOF

In a 2012 Williamstown Theater Festival summer season that includes a new play by Katori Hall and a musical adaptation of “Far From Heaven,” it takes a very special revival of “The Importance of Being Earnest,” indeed, to catch our eye. And the production of that classic Oscar Wilde farce that David Hyde Pierce plans to direct there might just meet that standard.

Here, for starters, is how this “Earnest” is described in the news release announcing the Williamstown season:

What if a family of “Guys and Dolls”-style gangsters moved to “Downton Abbey”-style London in order to escape certain, shall we say, entanglements? What if two of these wise guys fell hard for two tough dolls? And what if the formidable dame who runs the aforementioned criminal family developed an appetite for cucumber sandwiches?

Now here is how Mr. Hyde Pierce, the Emmy- and Tony Award-winning actor, explained his production to us in a recent telephone interview: “There’s a whole group of people who love ‘Guys and Dolls,’ and there’s a whole group of people who love ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,’” he said. “And this is our chance to alienate all of them.”

Pressed further, Mr. Hyde Pierce, a star of “Frasier,” “Spamalot” and “Curtains,” said that several years ago he had the idea to stage a benefit reading of “Earnest” starring “people who you would never in a million years cast,” like Russell Crowe and Sylvester Stallone.

That was never meant to be, but it inspired Mr. Hyde Pierce to revisit the original text. “I realized that the language of ‘Earnest’ and the language of the Damon Runyon characters from his short stories, and from ‘Guys and Dolls,’ was almost identical,” he said.

He added: “It’s a funny idea that lasts for a page if it’s just about how people talk and making these characters as if they were Prohibition-era gangsters. And what happened was, when I read through the play, in these voices, not only did it work for most the play, I really heard the play in a new way.”

After a private reading at Lincoln Center, Mr. Hyde Pierce is now bringing his “Earnest” to Williamstown at the invitation of its artistic director, Jenny Gersten. This production, he said, does not deviate from Wilde’s original words, nor does it change characters or locations, and it moves the time setting forward only a couple of decades to the Prohibition era.

The challenge facing him now, Mr. Hyde Pierce said, is to populate the play with actors who speak with a New York patois and would seem to fit naturally into a Runyonesque world.

“There are so many great actors who could put on that dialect,” he explained, “But then, as Mike Nichols used to say, ‘That’s a hat on a hat.’ I want people who really are these kinds of guys and gals.”

Before you offer him any casting suggestions, know that Mr. Hyde Pierce has already contemplated and abandoned a particularly devious one.

“My dream was to have James Gandolfini play Lady Bracknell, as a man,” he said. “You know how in organized crime, people are, like, Jimmy the Nose? Maybe they call him Lady Bracknell. But I realized by doing that, it really goes from being Oscar Wilde to being Ionesco, and that was one step too far.”

Mr. Hyde Pierce’s “Importance of Being Earnest” will open the Williamstown Theater Festival on its main stage, and is to run from June 26 through July 14.

]]> http://www.davidhydepierce.org/2012/03/david-plans-earnestguys-and-dolls-mashup/feed/ 0 http://www.davidhydepierce.org/2012/02/wtf-david-goes-back-to-his-roots-to-direct-earnest/ http://www.davidhydepierce.org/2012/02/wtf-david-goes-back-to-his-roots-to-direct-earnest/#comments Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:41:40 +0000 LA http://www.davidhydepierce.org/?p=3520 Sorry, couldn’t resit the headline.

WTF (as Williamstown Theatre Festival calls itself) has just announced its summer season 2012.

David, who worked at Williamstown as a non-equity actor, is going back to his theatrical roots this summer to direct a Runyonesque version of the Oscar Wilde classic,
The Importance of Being Earnest.

Has David caught the directing bug?

Here’s the announcement from the Williamstown Theatre Festival website.
Sounds fascinating. ‘Luck be a Lady (Bracknell)’?

MAIN STAGE

June 26 – July 14
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
By Oscar Wilde
Directed by David Hyde Pierce

What if a family of Guys and Dolls-style gangsters moved to Downton Abbey-style London in order to escape certain, shall we say, entanglements? What if two of these wise guys fell hard for two tough dolls? And what if the formidable dame who runs the aforementioned criminal family developed an appetite for cucumber sandwiches? Director David Hyde Pierce gives us Oscar Wilde’s hilarious high society satire in a very new way. Welcome to the family.

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