A versatile pianist, Peter Henderson is active as a performer in orchestral, chamber, and solo settings. Henderson is currently Associate Professor of Music and Artist-in-Residence at Maryville University, where he has served on the faculty since 2005. Since 2015, Henderson has been the Principal Keyboardist of the Sun Valley Music Festival Orchestra. In September 2023, he began his tenure as Principal Keyboardist of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO).
During January and February 2016, Henderson was the piano soloist in the SLSO’s California tour performances of Olivier Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux étoiles… (From the Canyons to the Stars…). Critics described him as a “powerhouse soloist” (San Francisco Chronicle) and praised his Messiaen playing for its “intense focus and thrilling vibrancy” (San Jose Mercury News). His most recent solo appearances with the SLSO, in March 2023, featured performances of Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard Concerto No. 11.
In addition to his regular ensemble performances with the SLSO, Henderson often delivers pre-concert lectures, introducing classical concert programs from Powell Hall’s stage.
Henderson’s discography includes collaborations with violinist David Halen, flutist Mark Sparks, bass trombonist Gerry Pagano, violist Jonathan Vinocour, and soprano Marlissa Hudson. His most recent solo album is A Celebration of African Composers for Piano (AMP AGCD 2706, released 2017).
Henderson also occasionally composes music and works as a recording producer. Rückblick (Looking Back), his song without words for trombone and piano, appears on Gerry Pagano’s album Solitude, released 2018. Printed and electronic editions of Rückblick were issued by Ascenda Music Publishing in January 2024.
Henderson holds a Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University, Bloomington, where his main piano instructor was Dr. Karen Shaw; he had previously studied with Dr. Jay Mauchley at the University of Idaho, Moscow. Henderson and his wife Kristin Ahlstrom, the SLSO’s Associate Principal Second Violinist, live in St. Louis with their lively, sweet beagle/terrier-mix, Zinni.
Brief bio (220 words)
A versatile pianist, Peter Henderson is active as a performer in orchestral, chamber, and solo settings. Henderson is currently Associate Professor of Music and Artist-in-Residence at Maryville University, and Principal Keyboardist of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) and the Sun Valley Music Festival Orchestra.
Henderson was the piano soloist in the SLSO’s February 2016 California tour performances of Olivier Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux étoiles… (From the Canyons to the Stars…); his Messiaen playing was lauded for its “intense focus and thrilling vibrancy” (San Jose Mercury News).
In addition to his regular ensemble performances with the SLSO, Henderson often delivers pre-concert lectures, introducing classical concert programs from Powell Hall’s stage.
Henderson’s discography includes collaborations with violinist David Halen, flutist Mark Sparks, and soprano Marlissa Hudson. His most recent solo album is A Celebration of African Composers for Piano (AMP AGCD 2706, released 2017).
Henderson also occasionally composes music. Rückblick (Looking Back), his song without words for trombone and piano, appears on Gerry Pagano’s album Solitude, released 2018. Printed and electronic editions of Rückblick were issued by Ascenda Music Publishing in January 2024.
Henderson holds a Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University, Bloomington. He and his wife Kristin Ahlstrom, the SLSO’s Associate Principal Second Violinist, live in St. Louis with their lively, sweet beagle/terrier-mix, Zinni.
When the Bösendorfer grand piano is stored, please:
Ensure that the piano is in its usual position close to the side of the altar platform, with its long (not curved) side nearest the platform.
Ensure that the piano’s keyboard lid is closed, and the keyboard lock on the left side is in place and locked (Maryville Public Safety—314-529-9500—has a copy of the keyboard-lock key).
Ensure that the piano’s undercarriage humidisitat is plugged into the nearest electrical outlet.
Ensure that the piano’s custom cover is on the instrument, and the sign asking people to refrain from placing things on the piano is in place on top of the custom cover. The piano’s dedicated bench can be placed under the keyboard in a way that will allow it to fit under the custom cover.
Please do not move this piano. Its usual position ensures that it will not be damaged by air blown upward from the registers along the chapel’s walls.
When using the Bösendorfer grand piano:
Remove the piano’s custom cover and keyboard lid-lock (Maryville Public Safety—314-529-9500—has a copy of the keyboard lid-lock’s key), then place them in a safe place.
When opening the piano’s lid, please first open the lid’s small section near the keyboard, then the main portion of the lid.
The lid will open partway, or fully. This is important!:
The hole in the lid nearest the edge is for the two shorter lid-support stick(s).
The hole in the lid farther in from the edge is for the full-length lid-support stick.
Once the lid is supported in its desired inclination, please ensure that the stick is perpendicular to the lid. If the lid and its supporting stick are mismatched, there’s a chance that the lid (which is heavy) may collapse, endangering people nearby.
Friday, March 3, 2023, 7:30 p.m. — Haydn Project concludes: Peter Henderson will perform the solo piano part of J. Haydn’s Keyboard Concerto No. 11, Hob. XVIII with the St. Louis Symphony conducted by Stephanie Childress —Powell Hall • Tickets available from the SLSO
Sunday, April 16, 2023, 3:00 p.m. — Music at Maryville Concert 4 of 5: Music by Maryville Faculty Composers — World premieres of the first Music at Maryville commissioned work by David Nalesnik, Peter Henderson‘s Five Poems of John Wickersham, and portions of Scott Lyle‘s Missa Pro Defunctis; also featuring performances of original songs by Maryville faculty members Gabriel Colbeck, Jonathan Fahnestock, Jesse Kavadlo, and John Marino — Maryville University Auditorium • Free admission; donations gratefully accepted
Sunday, November 13, 2022, 3:00 p.m. — Music at Maryville Concert 2 of 5: Adam Maness Combo plays Jazz Standards and Originals — Maryville University Auditorium • Free admission; donations gratefully accepted
Any time I think of Katja I picture a ball of energy, smiling most of the time, but always full of ideas, plans, inquiries, thoughts, reflections and more. While we were co-faculty members for only a year, she continued to be part of life at Maryville, planning Music at Maryville and often stopping by to check in on the music therapy program or just to say hello. I quickly deduced that musicianship made up her core. I gained credibility with Katja when she learned that I had studied piano with Audrey Hammann, a St. Louis pianist whom she respected.
Just a few months before the pandemic began, I was invited to dine with Katja and Rosalie Duvall, the director of the music therapy program who preceded me. It was a dinner full of conversation, speculation, information, possible gossip, inquiries regarding shared friendships and more. A non-stop conversation that I am so grateful for, though I didn’t know at the time how fortunate I was to get to spend the evening with Katja and Rosalie. I feel so privileged to have had Katja as a colleague.
Cynthia Briggs Professor Emeritus, Music Therapy Maryville University
Katja, by Mariam Simonyan
I met Katja in 1998 shortly after I started working at Maryville. Jackie Plunkett, former HR director, introduced us and Katja was eager to meet me since I spoke Russian. We later found out that we share Armenian heritage and much more. Very soon Katja became a good friend and part of my family.
It is hard for me to talk about Katja in past sense, she is very much alive in the hearts and memories of everyone that had the privilege to know her. My life is so much better, fuller and brighter because of Katja. Her enthusiasm, endless curiosity about people, world history, music, art and positive outlook on life is what I miss every day. She was ageless and could relate to anyone from great-grandkids to people well in their nineties. Although, she referred to them as “old people” and preferred to hang out with younger folks. Katja was young at heart and for her, age only mattered because her body was showing signs of it, but her mind was sharp and she was full of life and ready for the next adventure.
I look forward to the concert on April 24 to listen to the music Katja loved so much and to feel her presence in the Auditorium she performed so many times.
Mariam Simonyan Associate Director of Financial Aid, Operational Excellence Maryville University
On not saying good-bye to Katja, by Nicole Gordon
Katja was my piano teacher.
She had been a student of my grandfather, Leo Sirota, at the St. Louis Institute of Music, for many years. So our family visited St. Louis from New York every summer when my brother and I were growing up. In that way I came to know the Georgieff family: Stoyan, Katja, Michael, and Nic, but the last time I saw Katja until recently would have been in about 1965, almost sixty years earlier. Still, I had warm recollections of her.
Fortuitously, about four years ago a musicologist doing research on my grandfather asked whether I knew of any of Sirota’s students whom he could interview. I was able to track Katja down and arranged a three-way interview, and when it was over, Katja invited my husband Roger and me to visit her in St. Louis, which we did.
In the meantime, after having studied piano to a reasonable degree through high school, I had abandoned playing for about fifty years. But around the time I became reconnected with Katja, I had started up again in a modest way.
When we met, it was a love-at-first-sight episode. We had so much to discuss about things Russian, things Austro-Hungarian, Vienna, marzipan, Italy, Yugoslavia, detective stories, Tolstoy’s views on Wagner, Pushkin’s poetry, my grandparents, Katja’s strong views on absolutely everything, including her amazing attachment to her white Lexus sports car (that actually had to be squeezed into the garage), and naturally music, music, music. It was for me like opening up an entirely new world that had to do with my family’s history and background, but was also in particular an education and re-education on the piano by a master teacher. It was serious, intense, and fun, dotted with Katja’s wicked wit.
My fateful reconnection with Katja as a grown up necessarily began with her question, would I play for her? I was to be sure intimidated, but told her I had been working on some Bach, Chopin, Beethoven, and Brahms. I asked what she would like to me to play. She said, “play what you are most comfortable with.”
So first I played a Bach prelude. When it ended there was a silence, and then she said, “You play the Bach as though you were living in the nineteenth century. It is not played that way now, and I would not play it that way, but it is beautiful and convincing and you should keep it as it is.”
I could not have been more astonished and pleased.
But then I played the fugue, and after a longer silence, she said, “you may think that sounds nice, but it is not ‘Bach.'” My balloon was burst, but she was encouraging, and not long after, we established a way for me to have lessons though we were a thousand miles apart.
I would come to St. Louis about once every eight weeks and live with her for three blissful days. We would sit at the piano and work together for hours and hours, measure by measure, phrase by phrase. What I learned, and the intensity of the time we spent together, live in my memory as among the very happiest experiences I have ever had.
My way of not saying any false goodbye has been to listen over and over again to Lensky’s Aria (from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin) sung by Sergei Lemeshev in 1937 (we agreed that it was the best performance of the best aria in the best opera of all time) and to countless versions of “Morgen!” by Richard Strauss, among her favorite pieces.
And my way of staying connected to her is to practice the piano and to recollect particularly my adventure with her working on a particular Brahms Intermezzo to a level that satisfied her (“Brava!”) and which she took on with me because I loved it so, and she had never taught it, so it felt very much like something special we did together.
I cannot say goodbye to Katja, who gave me so much, whom I loved so deeply, for whom I will always grieve so deeply, and to whom I dare hope I brought some measure of pleasure.
To close on music she loved, sad and hopeful,
Eugene Onegin: “Kyda, kyda, kyda vi ydalilise…”
And “Morgen!”: “Und morgen wird die Sonne wieder scheinen…“
Nicole (“Nicky”) Gordon Katja’s piano student and friend
Katja, by Ana Simonyan
It is still difficult to believe that the world lost an extraordinary human being in 2021; a timeless and beautiful woman who embodied humility, gratitude, joy, acceptance, light, intelligence, creativity, and generosity. I am overwhelmingly thankful for all the time I spent with Katja, and for the opportunity to have known her in this life.
Katja was truly exceptional and so special to all that knew her. I have never known anyone so capable of effortlessly and meaningfully connecting with others across generations, cultures, time, and distance. I sincerely admire how Katja believed in the beauty of the small things in life. She loved so big and made other people love themselves more deeply as a result. I hope one day I can be half the person, teacher, mother, and friend that she was. I feel extremely grateful that I was a special person for whom she shared her wisdom, smile, laughter, kindness, love of literature and music, talent, and memories. Katja’s life was full and she made mine even fuller. I will miss her always.
Every Classical concert starts with a Varnam, followed by Prayer to Lord Ganesha for removing all obstacles
Varnam
Sri Rajamathangi
Prayer to Lord Ganesha
Gajavadana maam paahi
Shiva Shiva yana Rada with Kalpana swaras
Sharanagatham Endru Nambi Vanden
Main Song
Bhuvaneshwariya with Alapana and Kalpana Swaras
Namah parvathi — Bho Shambho — Shiva Shambho
Concluding Song
Thillana
“The basis of existence is in vibration, which is sound. Indian Classical Music is divine and spiritual, helping a person evolve into higher dimensions of experience, and evolution from within.”
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Grammy Award-winning American soprano Christine Brewer’s appearances in opera, concert, and recital are marked by her own unique timbre, at once warm and brilliant, combined with a vibrant personality and emotional honesty reminiscent of the great sopranos of the past. Named one of the top 20 sopranos of all time (BBC Music), her range, golden tone, boundless power, and control make her a favorite of the stage and a highly sought-after recording artist, one who is “in her prime and sounding glorious” (Anthony Tommasini, New York Times).
On the opera stage, Brewer is highly regarded for her striking portrayal of the title role in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, which she has performed with the Metropolitan Opera, Opéra de Lyon, Théatre du Châtelet, Santa Fe Opera, English National Opera, and Opera Theatre of St. Louis. Attracting glowing reviews with each role, she has performed Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at San Francisco Opera, Gluck’s Alceste with Santa Fe Opera, the Dyer’s Wife in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten at Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Paris Opera, and Lady Billows in Britten’s Albert Herring at Santa Fe Opera and the Los Angeles Opera. She created the role of Sister Aloysius in the world premiere of Doug Cuomo’s opera Doubt with the Minnesota Opera in 2013 and reprised the role in 2016 with the Union Avenue Opera in St. Louis.
Ms. Brewer began the 2017/2018 season with Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 conducted by Michael Sanderling to open the Dresden Philharmonic’s season. She sang the title role in Ariadne auf Naxos with the Kentucky Opera before returning to the St. Louis Symphony for Berg’s Seven Early Songs led by David Robertson. She sang Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with Symphony NH, Strauss’s Four Last Songs with the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, and scenes from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung with the Jacksonville Symphony led by Courtney Lewis. During the summer of 2017 she sang Lady Billows in Albert Herring for Union Avenue Opera and Act II from Die Walküre with baritone Alan Held for the Miami Music Festival.
Ms. Brewer continues her work with the Marissa, Illinois 6th graders in a program called Opera-tunities, which is now in its 14th year. She also works with the voice students at Webster University. On April 29, 2015, Christine Brewer joined 140 other notable celebrities receiving a bronze star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
Brewer’s discography includes over 25 recordings. Her most recent recording, Divine Redeemer on Naxos, contains selections performed with concert organist Paul Jacobs.
