Gayle Martin Henry

Soloist for "Musical Masters" - October 2, 2010
Preview & discussion at Ridgefield Library - September 26, 2010 

Gayle Martin Henry has had a distinguished career as a concert pianist, achieving international prominence as the sole American laureate of the sixth International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, and only the third American woman ever to reach the finals.

Recent highlights include a performance of the Beethoven "Emperor" Concerto with the California Philharmonic at the Ambassador Theater in Pasadena, and Korngold's Suite for Piano Left Hand and Strings at the Museum of Modern Art in Ft. Worth, Texas. In October 2010, she will perform the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #1 with the Ridgefield Symphony in Connecticut. She has played several all-Beethoven concerts, both on an authentic fortepiano (1807) and modern Steinway grands. Other performances include appearances with the Houston Symphony (since age 12), the Moscow Radio Philharmonic, the Maracaibo Symphony, the Denver Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Amarillo, Virginia and Battle Creek Symphony Orchestras, the Central New Jersey Symphony, and the Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York. She has toured throughout South America, including an engagement in Buenos Aires at the Teatro Colón with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Argentina. Her performance with the Moravian Philharmonic (Czech Republic) of Judith Shatin's Piano Concerto, "The Passion of St. Cecilia," was released by Capstone Records. Additional concerts include performances at Lincoln Center in New York, at the White House and at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and numerous other appearances throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, England, Austria, Poland, Israel, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Mainland China.

She continues her partnership with the exciting concert  oboist, Gerard Reuter, playing transcriptions of opera and songs ranging from Mozart to Sondheim to Wagner.

In reviewing her solo Alice  Tully Concert at Lincoln Center, the New York Concert Review wrote that Gayle Martin Henry  created “a truly magical atmosphere…and made this listener smile with pleasure..” Other reviewers have written of “her intense passion and deep-seated emotional response to the music” (Washington Post), and that “this was a performance which, if recorded on 78s, could have fooled the average pianophile into thinking he or she was listening to one of the greats of the past.” (Woodstock Times).

A native Texan, Gayle Martin Henry was one of the very last students of the famous pedagogue Mme. Rosina Lhevinne at the Juilliard School, where she won the Tchaikovsky Concerto Competition and performed it under the baton of Alfred Wallenstein. Upon graduation, she was awarded the prestigious Josef Lhevinne Prize. She holds the M.A. degree from New York University.