Hailed as “a force of nature” with “a skilled hand at crafting textures that pulse with life,” Jesse Plessis, born in Sparwood British Columbia, has regularly appeared in concerts, series, and music festivals across Canada, England, and continental Europe, performed as a guest artist with several ensembles in Canada, and has garnered numerous awards in both piano and composition.
As a composer, his works have been called “ardent and incredibly well-structured” and have been performed by many musicians and groups in Canada including the Land’s End Ensemble and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
In 2013 he founded the Centric Festival, a classical music festival that continues annually in Lethbridge.
Having a particular affinity for several contemporary composers, he has been delighted to give premieres of works by Arlan Schultz, Marcel Bergmann, Kaija Saariaho, John Corigliano, Nico Muhly, and Kjartan Olafsson.
Plessis obtained a Master of Music degree from Brandon University where he studied piano with Megumi Masaki and composition with Patrick Carrabre. His Bachelor of Music degree is from the University of Lethbridge where he studied piano with Deanna Oye and composition with Arlan Schultz, Plessis currently resides in Montréal where he studies with Paul Stewart at the University of Montréal.
Mr. Plessis will be performing Beethoven’s Sonata No. 29 in B-Flat Major, Op. 106 the Hammerklavier sonata.
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About the Program “This will give pianists something to do fifty years hence.” When Beethoven made this remark about his twenty-ninth piano sonata, it would not be considered bold had he said “two hundred years hence.” This work and its surrounding opus numbers mark Beethoven’s return to composition after a five-year period of silence brought about by extreme strife and tumult in his personal life and financial situation. The Hammerklavier sonata burst out of this hiatus, as if its composer dares the universe to try to silence him, and it still stands today as a model of musical composition: one of the monumental, most unified, and most human pieces of music of all time.
This concert is the third in a series of five concerts during 2018 generously sponsored by: