PORT LUDLOW — Liana Forest, a Ukrainian-born pianist whose repertoire travels from Beethoven to Gershwin to “West Side Story,” arrives here Friday for another performance in the Port Ludlow Arts Council series.
“From Bach to Broadway” is the title of Forest’s concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Bay Club, 120 Spinnaker Place, and tickets are on sale for $24 at the Bay Club and via www.PortLudlowArtsCouncil.com.
Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. so patrons can choose their seats, visit the bar and enjoy a new art show: Eleanor Watson-Gove, a member of the Port Ludlow Artists’ League, is displaying her pottery at the Bay Club.
Two Seattle musicians, bassist Clipper Anderson and drummer Mark Ivester, will join Forest as she combines Romantic classics with a jazz style.
A graduate of Russia’s Moscow Conservatoire, she is known for her renditions of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and of music from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”
Forest’s performances also feature her own arrangement of the Paganini Rhapsody by Rachmaninoff, for example, as well as a jazzy version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” called “Bumble Boogie.”
As she has traveled the world, the pianist has performed at summer festivals and on cruise ships, given recitals in Austria and Germany, and drawn raves.
“Liana is a brilliant interpreter who cannot hide her Russian soul. Her music was filled with passion and poetic surrender,” one critic wrote in the German newspaper Wochenblatt.
For more details about Friday’s performance and the arts council concert series, phone the Bay Club at 360-437-2208 or visit PortLudlowArtsCouncil.com.
Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
