Experience “A Musical Salon” by Opera Singer Benjamin Alunni and Pianist Fernando Palomeque with Music Scholar Vincent Giroud
As part of their U.S. tour and by invitation of the French Embassy in Washington, world-renowned artists French opera singer Benjamin Alunni and Argentine pianist and opera conductor Fernando Palomeque will offer a lecture-performance with excerpts from their concert "A Musical Salon" from 3 to 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 7, at The Ohio State University at Newark. The event will be held in the John and Mary Alford Performing Arts Hall inside the John Gilbert Reese Center at 1209 University Drive, Newark, Ohio 43055. A performance of the full-length concert will take place at The Ohio State University in the Timashev Family Music Building at 1900 College Road, Columbus, Ohio 43210, on Wednesday, Nov. 9, from 6-7:30 p.m.
The 60-min lecture-performance for tenor offered in Newark focuses on the friendship between France and the United States. The program invites the audience to explore various aspects of the musical dialogue between the two countries throughout the 20th century: American musicians living in France, French musicians popular with American audiences and hosted by the United States, crosslinguistic exchanges and musical influences. The lecture will be led by Vincent Giroud, PhD, French and comparative literature professor at the University of Burgundy Franche-Comté and former curator at the Beinecke Library at Yale University.
The event is free and open to the public.
About the Artists
Born in Buenos Aires in 1990, Palomeque is one of his generation's most recognized Argentine musicians. His extensive piano and conducting repertoire include pieces from 18th century Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti's sonatas to today's music, to which he devotes much of his work. He continues his studies in piano at the National Conservatory of Music of Paris and in traditional repertoire at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Dusseldorf.
Alunni began his professional career in Baroque music under the direction of French harpsichordist Christophe Rousset, American harpsichordist Skip Sempé and French conductor Raphaël Pichon and performed regularly with the Les Arts Florissants ensemble and American-French conductor William Christies.
While maintaining a significant presence in the contemporary music repertoire, Alunni loves devoting himself to creation. He regularly performs on the stage of several leading opera houses, such as le Theatre de la Monnaie I De Munt, l'Opéra Comique, le Festival d' Aix-en-Provence and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Alunni's first solo album, Confluence{s} (Klarthe records), is dedicated to French melody inspired by Jewish cultures.