Livewire 13: Pianist Idith Meshulam Korman

The Livewire 13: Transformation festival’s inaugural concert features pianist Idith Meshulam Korman, who for ten years has taught piano in a correctional facility. Over the course of time, she has witnessed how music can empower individuals with a renewed sense of identity and life perspective, bringing about healing and reduced recidivism. In the spirit of kinship, Meshulam will perform works that have made the most impact on her students. She will be joined by poet/creator Reese Basile who will recite his poetry with Satie’s Gnossienne No. 3.

As the performer states, “Music is a language and it can express ideas, emotions, and moods. Music also can touch you spiritually, triggering an expanded state of awareness and heightened perception. Music has a powerful ability to tag a memory or highly emotional experience in your consciousness. A lecture/concert exploring the meaning of transformation through music in my work as a teacher and a performer.”

The Program will feature:
Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude in C Major, and Prelude and Fugue in C minor (1722)
Alberto Duque: I Had No Air for voice and accordion (2022)
Franz Schubert: “Wanderer” Fantasy in C major (D. 760), excerpt (1822)
Erik Satie: Gymnopédie No. 1 (1888)
Erik Satie: Gnossienne No. 3 (1890) with spoken words by Reese Basile
George Crumb: Selections from Makrokosmos, Volume I (1972)

Born in Israel, Meshulam received her doctorate from New York University, where she taught for ten years. While a student at NYU, she researched the unpublished piano music of Stefan Wolpe for her doctoral dissertation. Her involvement with the Greek composer Nikos Skalkottas began in 1999, when she organized the first all-Skalkottas concert in New York, honoring him on the 50th anniversary of his death. This work led Ms. Meshulam to her collaboration with the composer and conductor Gunther Schuller, with whom she recorded Skalkottas’ 32 Piano Pieces for GM Recording in 2004. American Record Guide describes her performance: “Ms. Meshulam plays with energetic moxie and aplomb, her technique truly phenomenal, yet her subtle coloring of the introspective passages is no less awe-inspiring.”

She recently collaborated with the visual artist Louise Fishman and performed at the Chaim and Read Gallery and the Neuberger Museum of Art. She functioned as the curator of the American Composers Alliance festivals, and on the board of Association For the Promotion of New Music. She is the founder and artistic director of Ensemble Pi.

Admission is free, and reservations are not required.