RELEASED: Feb. 13, 2003

DANVILLE, KY—The Centre College music program will present a recital featuring pianist Nada Maria Loutfi (NADA). The free concert will take place on Feb. 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Audrey R. Gillespie Recital Hall on the Centre campus. NADA will perform the 27 Etudes of Frederick Chopin.

Larry Bitensky, assistant professor of music, says "In the 19th century, etudes were written as technical studies for pianists, and the technical demands of Chopin's Etudes are tremendous. However, Chopin's Etudes were a true innovation in composition as well and are a remarkable example of a composer building large, musically satisfying works out of a single technical idea. All pianists at some point in their development must come to terms with several of the etudes.

"It really is quite a feat of nerve as well as technical ability to perform the entire set as NADA will be doing."

NADA is a native of Beirut, Lebanon. Her early piano training was hampered by the unrelenting civil war and terrorism, which took her mother's life in a mortar explosion.

After seven years of playing the piano (mostly self-taught), NADA was admitted to the Paris Conservatory. She was the first woman from the Middle East to take first prize in piano. She pursued advanced studies at Indiana University and the Banff Centre in Canada.

NADA has performed in Europe, the Middle East, Canada, Australia and the United States. Her concert engagements have included Salle Gaveau (Paris), Salzburg Festival, Louisville Orchestra, Dayton Arts Institute, Kilburn Hall (Eastman School of Music), Jupiter Symphony (New York City), and Dame Myra Hess Series (Chicago), as well as prestigious events for the ministry of France and the President of the United States.

NADA has been featured on NPR's "Performance Today," Radio-France, French National Television and Radio and Arab international channels.

NADA was the founder of Purely Piano in Louisville, Ky., a nonprofit organization that sponsored recitals by piano soloists in both intimate settings and in schools. She has traveled throughout Kentucky introducing rural and mountain communities, hospital patients p and prison populations to classical music through solo and group performances.

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