Jazz Pianist Burnett Thompson offers Christmas in Vienna on December 26 in Annapolis

On Friday, December 26, at 8 pm, classically trained jazz pianist Burnett Thompson will perform “Christmas in Vienna” in a concert that will showcase his skills as a composer and improviser in multiple genres. Thompson, equally at home with jazz and classical styles and everything in between, studied in Vienna from 1972 to 1975. The December concert will feature music inspired by the holiday season and by his extensive experience in that great musical city. His CD, also entitled “Christmas in Vienna,” will be available for purchase and features Burnett’s very personal renditions of classics like O Tannenbaum, Silent Night and Three Kings. The concert will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis (UUCA), 333 Dubois Road. Tickets are $15 at the door. For more information visit www.uuannapolis.org/slider/fourth-friday or call 410-266-8044.

Brian Ganz, Artistic Director of the Fourth Friday Concert Series and a fellow pianist, has known Thompson for years and was thrilled that he was available to perform this program the day after Christmas. “Burnett’s improvisations are miraculous. It is exciting when an artist sits down and the audience doesn’t know what it’s about to hear. But when the artist himself sits down not knowing what will come out and then begins to make astoundingly complex and compelling music, I call that a miracle!” Ganz said.

A Washington Post review said of Thompson’s CD Uncertain Times, “It’s music designed for both the head and the heart--ordered and romantic, deliberate and impulsive, stately and swinging, cerebral and sentimental… there’s also something inherently whimsical about his approach to the piano, a kind of playful inquisitiveness that keeps the music fresh and surprising.”

Burnett Thompson is active as a pianist, composer, educator and concert producer, and makes Washington, DC his home. He has collaborated with such conductors as Mstislav Rostropovich and Piotr Gajewski. With Gajewski and the National Philharmonic, Thompson performed his own Concerto for Piano and Orchestra of which the piano solo part was entirely improvised. Thompson currently directs programming for Castleton in Performance, Piano in the White House, Jazz on Jackson Place, the Hill Center Concert Series, and Piano Jazz at the Arts Club. His musical focus spans all continents, including traditional music from Asia, South America, European classical and folk traditions, to American Jazz. He is particularly active in China, where he tours regularly. Trained as a classical pianist, Mr. Thompson received his musical education at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, Austria, and the New England Conservatory of Music.