Charmingly personable, intensely musical, brilliant virtuosic, and refreshingly lacking the stuffy pretention sometimes associated with classical musicians, pianist Lara Downes is, above all else, an exceptionally engaging artist dedicated to creating diverse programs that run the gamut of emotions and musical styles from Bach to the Beatles.Trained both in her native California and abroad (Paris Conservatoire; Vienna Hochschule), Lara has performed on the world’s most prestigious stages, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Vienna Konzerthaus and the Salle Gaveau.
An Artist In Residence since 2004 at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis, Lara also serves as director of UC Davis' ArtsBridge, a university/K-12 arts education partnership program. She is the founder and artistic director of the Mondavi Center Young Artists Competition. The young mother of two small children, she is strongly committed to introducing classical music to students, presenting a full range of outreach activities ranging from advanced master classes to introductory K-12 programs in conjunction with her concert appearances. Lara works with Grammy in the Schools and VH-1's Save the Music Foundation, to whom she donates a portion of all CD sales and performance fees.
Lara’s luminous new release Dream of Me (Tritone), her fourth solo recording, features distinctive, timeless music by some of the best New American Romantics: daydreams and night visions; the journeys you take and can’t remember in the morning... Among the CD's highlights: William Bolcom’s Dream Shadows, Aaron Jay Kernis’ Before Sleep and Dreams, Samuel Barber’s romantic Nocturne, and world-premiere recordings of Adam Silverman’s Nocturnes and Reveries and Dan Coleman’s Burden of Dreams.
All of Lara’s recordings have met with tremendous critical and popular acclaim - her debut CD, Invitation to the Dance (Arkadia/Postcard, 2000) was called “a magical little recording†by National Public Radio – but it is live in concert that her "unique blend of musicianship and showmanship" (NPR) can be best appreciated. As Lara writes in the liner notes to Invitation to the Dance: "I dance at the piano. I've always played this way, swinging and bopping and grooving with the music, seldom sitting still. It's just the way my body follows the rhythmic pull, the melodic lines...â€
Equally passionate about playing works by young, emerging composers as well as finding new ways to explore, understand and interpret the best-loved traditional repertoire, Lara presents her audiences with things that are totally new and takes them on thrilling voyages into territory they thought they already knew. Emerging from a two-year-long Mozart cycle at Mondavi Center, her recital programs for the coming season illuminate the inspiration that composers ranging from 19th-century Romantics to American Moderns have taken from the world of dreams and fantasies.
Lara currently lives in California with her family. Her all-too-limited free time is spent indulging her addiction for vintage clothes shopping, reading the New Yorker at the gym, and watching Law & Order re-runs.
Lara Downes is a Steinway Artist .
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