The CMR Spotlight
Valerie Tryon
Valerie Tryon began her career as a concert pianist when she was still a child in England. Before the age of twelve she had been broadcast by the BBC and was appearing regularly on the concert stage. At London's Royal Academy of Music, she won the coveted Boise Scholarship, enabling her to study with Jacques Février in Paris. One year later she was a prize winner at the Liszt competition in Budapest. Critical acclaim for her recital at the Cheltenham Festival in England helped to launch her adult concert career. She emigrated to Canada in 1971, and since her arrival there, Ms. Tryon has continued to distinguish herself as a concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, accompanist, adjudicator and, of course, creator of outstanding MIDI sequences.
Her large repertoire, ranging from Bach to contemporary composers, includes more than fifty concertos. She has performed in all of the major concert halls of Great Britain and Canada. Her concerto performances have included collaborations with Canadian orchestras such as the Toronto Symphony, the Hamilton Philharmonic and Symphony Nova Scotia, and with many great conductors such as Sir Colin Davis, Sir Adrian Boult, Charles Dutoit, Pierre Monteux and Simon Streatfield.
She holds the Harriet Cohen Award for Service to Music (1967), and was also the recipient of the Dove Prize in 1955 (presented by Vaughan Williams), and the Ferenc Liszt Medal of Honor in 1986 (awarded by the Hungarian Ministry of Culture). In 1987 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. She is presently Artist-in-Residence at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Ms. Tryon now broadcasts frequently for the BBC as well as for Canadian and American broadcasting networks. She is a Canadian Juno Award-winning recording artist. Her solo performances and appearances with the Rembrandt Trio have been recorded on the Omnibus, Pye, Argo, Lyrita, Educo and CBC labels. Currently, she is joining other world-class pianists to record the complete works of Franz Liszt for Naxos.
Regarding her unique approach to playing the piano, Valerie Tryon had this to say: "I love the challenge of making orchestral-like tone colors emerge from the instrument. While the pianistic element is uppermost , I often have orchestral coloring in mind for much of the music I play."
This is certainly evident in her MIDI sequences. Valerie Tryon happens to be one of the most prolific creators of classical MIDI sequences on the Internet. During the past few years she has collaborated with PG Music, Inc. to record numerous sequences for the Pianist series. She uses a Roland FP8-88 weighted MIDI keyboard controller with realtime recording techniques to prepare her 'live' sequences. Valerie Tryon will soon be featured (along with other pianists) in the latest installments of The Pianist, (Volumes IV and V- featuring all of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas). According to PG Music's president Peter Gannon, this latest project brings her total number of sequences to nearly 900!