Award-winning U.K. pianist Philip Edward Fisher will perform the first concert of the 2018-19 Sanford-Hill Piano Series in the Performing Arts Center Concert Hall at Western Washington University in Bellingham at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 12. Fisher will perform works by Beethoven, Brahms, Liebermann, Liszt, and Sibelius. Fisher’s debut recording with the Naxos label, “Handel Keyboard Suites Vol. 1,” was released in early 2010 to great critical acclaim and hit the US Classical Billboard Chart within the first week of its release. Volume 2 of the set was released in 2015 to further acclaim. His release on the Chandos label, “Piano Works by The Mighty Handful,” was featured on Classic FM as John Suchet's "Album of the Week,”as "Classical Album of the Week" in The Telegraph, and has been nominated in the "Best Solo Instrumental Album" category of the International Classical Music Awards 2012. Fisher has appeared in-concert at Merkin Hall and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, and his United Kingdom credits include performances at the Purcell Room, Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre and Royal Festival Hall in London, Usher Hall in Edinburgh, the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, and Symphony Hall in Birmingham. He has performed concertos with, amongst others, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Tampere Philharmonic, and the Toledo and Juilliard Symphonies, working with conductors such as Hannu Lintu, John Axelrod, Larry Rachleff, James Lowe and Giordano Bellincampi. Recent highlights have included an appearance at the "International Classical Music Awards" in Tampere, Finland, as the representative artist for the Chandos label. The evening’s performance will feature: Beethoven’s “Sonata No 17 in D minor, Op. 31 No. 2 – ‘Tempest’”; Lowell Liebermann’s “Two Impromptus. op. 131 (2016)”; Brahms’ “Four Klavierstucke, Op. 119”; Sibelius’ “Impromptu No. 5 in B minor, Op. 5,” including “Etude in A minor, Op. 76, No. 2” and “Romance in D-flat Major, Op. 24, No. 9”; and Liszt’s “Sonata in B minor, S. 178.” Tickets are $18-44 with $6 discounts for students and $5 tickets for Music majors. Reservations for the performance are available by calling 360-650-6146, or online at wwu.edu/sanfordhill. Tickets are available at the box office during weekdays, or at the door one hour prior to performance. Free parking is available for patrons in Lot 14G south of the Performing Arts Center, and disability accommodations can be arranged with the box office. Proceeds from ticket sales benefit piano scholarships at WWU named for the series’ benefactors Sibyl Sanford and her former piano teacher Ford Hill, WWU emeritus professor of Music.
