Carolyn Enger, pianist
Internationally celebrated American pianist Carolyn Enger has gained critical acclaim for her exquisite lyrical playing, as well as her deeply felt interpretations. In addition to an active performance schedule on two continents, Ms. Enger has enjoyed remarkable success as a recording artist: The New York Times selected her Naxos recording of intimate Ned Rorem miniatures, Piano Album I & Six Friends, as one of the newspaper’s
“Best In Classical Recordings”, writing “Among the 90th–birthday tributes this year to the essential American composer Ned Rorem, this recording especially stands out,” while Gramophone declared, “Enger raises the miniatures to a higher level.”
Ms. Enger’s touring opportunities have included venues throughout the United States and beyond, including the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, the Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany, United States Military Academy West Point, the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, The National Gallery of Art in D.C., the National Gallery in Oslo, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC. Deepening her commitment to multimedia collaborations, Ms. Enger was part of renowned illustrator and writer Maira Kalman’s exhibit Maira Kalman Selects at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, and her recording of Arvo Pärt’s music was featured in conceptual artist Mischa Kuball’s sound and light exhibit res.o.nant at the Jewish Museum Berlin.
Recent highlights include the publication of her article, The Mischlinge Exposé: Stories of Assimilation and Conversion, in the book Women Defying Hitler: Rescue and Resistance under the Nazis, published by Bloomsbury Academic; concerts at Baruch College, Kean University, Noontime Concerts in San Francisco, Boston Public Library, the National
Gallery in Oslo, the White Stork Synagogue in Wrocław, Poland; the Bach–Festival in Arnstadt, Germany; the Portuguese Synagogue’s Candlelight Concert series in Amsterdam; concerts in Erfurt, Potsdam, and Gotha, Germany; and recitals in the greater New York area.
Ms. Enger is dedicated to bringing music to diverse audiences in accessible civic spaces. One of her performances at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center is featured in Frederick Wiseman’s acclaimed documentary Ex Libris, which premiered on PBS. This past winter Carolyn enjoyed her residency, showcasing her immersive film/sound project Resonating Earth, with Musica Sierra and the public school children in the Sierra Valley. One presenter shared that her performance left audiences “in complete awe of her passion, skill and genuine warmth.”
Ms. Enger studied at the Manhattan School of Music and is a Steinway Artist.
From the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to coal burning plants in the Ruhr Valley of Germany, from the glorious heights of mountain ranges in Alaska to mountains of potassium waste in Eastern Germany, Resonating Earth was created in response to the climate crisis. With a wide range of ambient music, including Bach, Nico Muhly, Pia Møller Johansen, Missy Mazzoli, Philip Glass, Marcos Balter, Iman Habibi and Caroline Shaw; alongside stunning imagery of the environment by Peabody Award-winning producer Elliott Forrest(WQXR), visual artist Myles Aronowitz, and internationally-exhibited environmental activist and photographer J Henry Fair, Resonating Earth creates a soundscape focusing on the beauty in our environment and inspires environmental activism in an artistic, musically immersive way.
Resonating Earth seeks to transport listeners to a still, meditative space, allowing them to decompress from their daily lives, and invites introspection about humanity’s place on the planet, inspiring action to protect our beautiful, fragile world.
The Mischlinge Exposé weaves a multimedia tapestry around a little-known aspect of the Holocaust: the Mischlinge (a derogatory Nazi term for those neither fully Jewish nor fully Aryan). Interweaving video and audio testimony from Carolyn’s godmother and her father (both labeled Mischling, Grade A by the Nazis), with the music of composers from the salon period who converted to Christianity in the decades before the war, and works reacting to questions of identity after the war, the program vividly illustrates what it was like to be between worlds in Germany in the first half of the 20th century. Through the telling of her family story, Ms. Enger’s live documentary The Mischlinge Exposé directly addresses universally significant issues of identity and inclusion, encouraging empathy, tolerance, and engagement.
The Musical Legacies program uses the varied fabric of composers’ voices to explore and celebrate the numerous marginalized communities who have had an impact on the overall fabric of American musical history. Featured pieces ranging over centuries of creativity, struggle, and triumph tell the stories of African American artists and other communities whose songs rang out despite America’s long history with systemic racism, sexism and prejudice, and their influences on composers of today. Ms. Enger is excited to share the musical lineage of her dear Ned Rorem and his roots that travel this musical path, beginning with George Whitefield Chadwick, William Grant Still, Ulysses Kay, Florence B. Price, Margaret Bonds, Ned Rorem, and Daron Hagen.
While they may have never met, Beethoven’s and Schubert’s music is tied together in Viennese musical history, so much so that they are buried next to each other. Both composers were masters of creating music that was expressive and lyrical, and composed some of their most important works for the piano. In Masters of Transcendence, Carolyn Enger pairs two penultimate works from each composer, Schubert’s B-Flat Piano Sonata, D. 960 and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31, Op. 110, creating a performance that features the composers at the heights and depths of their extraordinary musical utterances.
Celebrating Women Composers : Music HerStory exalts contributions that women have made to the world of classical music, with compositions by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Clara Schumann, Ethel Smyth, Florence Price, Meredith Monk, JJ Hollingsworth, Missy Mazzoli, Caroline Shaw and Pia Møller Johansen. Pianist Carolyn Enger feels dedicated to feature under-represented female composers, hoping to inspire audiences to appreciate the importance of familiarizing themselves with diverse creators, underscoring the universality of music.
Lyricism Then & Now is a multifaceted journey, traversing into the depths of Beauty in songlike idioms, with works from the Classical period to the present day including compositions by some of the most prolific composers of songs, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Leonard Bernstein, Ned Rorem, Caroline Shaw and JJ Hollingsworth.
American Ethos introduces the audience to composers of a variety of backgrounds reminding us of the unique spirit of America and the different cultures that make up our nation. Ms. Enger’s program shines a light on diverse voices, who are often overlooked, and are American composers of our time. Selections from artists such as Aaron Copland, Ned Rorem, Leonard Bernstein, Caroline Shaw, Philip Glass, Marcos Balter, Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli, Meredith Monk, JJ Hollingsworth and Brent Michael Davids celebrating Native American roots.
Leipzig had long been a major center for music, spawning a fair amount of the world’s best music from 1720-1860. It has been a trade city since the time of the Holy Roman Empire, hosting the oldest surviving trade fair in the world. Sitting at the intersection of two important medieval trade routes, it has been a major center for publishing and home to one of the oldest universities in Europe, dating from 1409. The town’s enviable economic status stimulated a notable cultural life based particularly on the early development of the printing industry but also including the musical efflorescence associated with Johann Sebastian Bach.
Ms. Enger has created a program to capture the essence of this vital city and the varied musical personalities that passed through and left their mark, J S Bach, Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, who established Germany’s first music conservatoire in Leipzig, Clara and Robert Schumann, Georg Nepomuk Hummel, Hanns Eisler, Walter Braunfels, Edvard Grieg, Ethel Smyth, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt and Gustav Mahler.
“Impeccable sense of timing…Clear tone and graceful naivety…Enger can be commended for her taste in music…There is much novelty to delight in….” –American Record Guide
“This year the classical music critics of The New York Times had plenty of options when selecting their favorite recordings of 2013….“Among the 90th Birthday tributes this year to the essential American composer Ned Rorem, this recording especially stands out.“–The New York Times
“It so effectively conjures a place, in fact, two or three different places: what the artist was considering (both the composer, the late Ned Rorem, and the amazing and patient pianist, the very alive Carolyn Enger); where the listener is, as their ear’s soul exists in a miraculously aware place of peace and anticipation; and the great, cold golden glow of the studio, as Enger sat, in Buddha stillness, on the bench, considering the horror and joy of time and the pregnant fullness of emptiness.“-Tim Sommer, Rock and Roll Globe
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