Search - Alla Nikitskaya :: East Meets West

Every performance is unique to me. New place, new audience brings fresh feelings to my soul, and it leads to a special atmosphere in music I play this evening. Alla Nikitskaya was born in a family of professional musicians. She started play piano at age of 5, under instruction of her mother- Lada Nikolaevna Nikitskaya , a great piano teacher. A little later mom brought her to the music school affiliated with Moscow Conservatory College, and pianist s life started here. After graduating Moscow Gnessin Institute, where she used to study together with one of the most famous contemporary pianists Evgeniy Kissin, she started her career as a concert pianist and a piano duettist with her sister Maria Nikitskaya. This duo became a winner of Moscow Scriabin s Radio festival in 1991. Alla got married, moved to the USA in 1999, and then she gave birth to her son. In 2001 she started giving piano recitals in NH. In 2005 Alla recorded her 1st CD Romantic Interpretations with music of Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Debussy. She became an American citizen in 2006. She was developing her piano recitals in such prestigious places as Lincoln Laboratory Concert Hall, Lexington MA; Amazing Things Art Center, Framingham MA, Concord NH and Manchester NH concert auditoriums. Next CD, East Meets West , marks a beginning of the new stage in her career: it is recorded on wonderful Hamburg Steinway at Maine Sound Stage studio in Brunswick, Maine. Along with classical pieces by Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and Liadov, it contains popular American music like Moon River , I Could Have Danced , The Shadow Of Your Smile , Strangers In The Night and Cabaret . For a pianist with classical music education this music looked fresh and extremely interesting. She decided to play them because she started feeling more close to jazz styles with their rhythms, beautiful melodies, freedom and sense of humor.