Piano duo Bente Hansen and Jesse Plessis have been performing together for eight years. They met at the University of Lethbridge where Hansen is a professor and Plessis was an undergrad student, became good friends, and later an ensemble. While Jesse currently lives in Montréal and Bente still teaches at the University of Lethbridge, they continue to reunite occasionally for concerts.

Hansen and Plessis are both classical pianists with a big love for rock and roll music, and so it’s no surprise that they are most sought-after for their performance of Plessis’ arrangement of the complete Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band which Plessis composed especially for the two of them in 2011. Plessis follows closely the format of the album – the track listing is the same and they move from song to song nearly continuously. Without lyrics to help the listener understand the meaning of each song, Plessis has explored all manner of ways to express those same meanings pianistically with the result that the reimagining of each song is not faithful to the original sound, but extremely faithful to the original feeling.

Along with the ProArts Society, Hansen and Plessis would like to express their immense gratitude to Kevin Anderson and the Steinway Piano Gallery of Calgary for their generous donation of a steinway grand piano for this special concert.