After a visit to the West Point Foundry with my friend, Ken and some refreshments at The Depot in Cold Spring we went to The Chapel of our Lady Restoration. Inside a woman was playing on a grand piano and we discovered that this was preparation for a free recital to be given the following Sunday. Ken was back in Briarcliff, but my wife and myself decided to go.

The pianist was Cynthia Peterson who according to her bio:

Pianist Cynthia Peterson performs works from a broad solo, chamber, and contemporary repertoire. Her performances include the American Academy in Rome, radio broadcasts in Washington D.C. and Virginia, Anderson House Museum in Washington, D.C., Minnesota, and chamber music touring in Canada. She has appeared at many venues in the New York area including the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center, and the Garden State Center for the Arts. As prize-winner of concerto competitions, she performed the Beethoven First Piano Concerto with the Philharmonic Symphony of Westchester, and the Gershwin Concerto with the Virginia Beach Pops Orchestra, and was soloist with several local orchestras including the Yonkers Civic Orchestra and the Westchester Youth Symphony.

She appeared at Yale University and the Metropolitan Museum with violinist Kyung-Jun Kim, and as the featured pianist in works by John Corigliano at the CUNY Graduate Center Auditorium, her performance hailed by the composer as “extraordinary.”

She received a Masters degree in performance from Juilliard, where she was awarded the prestigious Irwin Freundlich Memorial Scholarship Award, and holds a doctorate from the University of Connecticut. She also received fellowships at Tanglewood, the Banff Centre, the Festival at Sandpoint, and the Ravinia Festival.
Ms. Peterson has taught at the City University of New York/Lehman as head of the piano faculty, SUNY/New Paltz, Dutchess Community College, and at the Barry Tuckwell Institute at Gettysburg College, performing with renowned horn player/conductor Barry Tuckwell and other faculty.

Cynthia has also composed music to “Sabbath Service” in collaboration with choreographer Nina Stein White, which was performed at the Scarsdale Congregational Temple.

She co-directed “PlayWeekend,” an adult amateur chamber music workshop held in Cold Spring, New York.

She is currently the Executive Director of the Chappaqua Orchestra.

The programme included: Mozart, Sonata in F; Debussy: Etude – Pour les degrés chromatiques, Etude – Pour les sonorités opposés; L’isle joyeuse; Hindemith: Sonata No. 2 for Piano; Chopin, Scherzo No. 4 in E major. The piano is a Steinway Grand Piano, once owned by the Livingston family. It was the first recital in the 2016 Sunday Music Series.

The Chapel only sits about 200 people and was completely full. I’d tried to take a few pictures, but it was impossible to get a good angle: the heads of the people in the audience kept getting in the way. Then I realized that we were downstairs and there was also an upstairs. So up I went. The angle was much better from there.

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