FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8 - 7:30 pm
Master Class: Saturday October 9, 9:00 am

Grammy award winner Lambert Orkis has garnered international recognition for his performances and his wide ranging catalog of recordings, which includes solo piano, contemporary music, chamber music, and early music performed on period instruments. He has had lifelong artistic collaborations with the great 'cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and has made recordings with a long list of international artists, including Arleen Auger, Lucy Shelton, Anner Bylsma and Anne-Sophie Mutter. He has been Principal Keyboard of the National Symphony in Washington DC since the late 1970's, when Maestro Rostropovich was so taken by his playing that he created the position for him. In addition, he plays with the Kennedy Center Chamber Players and is Professor of Piano at Temple University. To introduce the 2004-5 Bell Series, Mr. Orkis will play a program entitled "From Hammers to Bytes," which illustrates the evolution of keyboard music from the early fortepiano to the modern Steinway and the synthesizer. His performance of the Sonata-Fantasia (2001) by James Primosch is part of an exhilarating program that will combine the powers of the acoustic piano and the Kurzweil synthesizer to show the breadth of artistic keyboard expression – past, present, and future.