“A splendid pianist–refined, searching and expressive, and her playing is loaded with insight and interpretative detail.”
(The Washington Post)
The Portuguese pianist Alexandra Mascolo-David has performed and led workshops and master classes in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. She has given solo recitals in Brazil, China, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Spain, and in the United States, including a New York debut recital at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in May 2004, which received a favorable review in The New York Concert Review. She has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in Peru and the USA, and has completed five years of engagements with the Orpheus Piano Trio of Central Michigan University. Her other collaborative performances have included concerts at the Fontana Chamber Arts Summer Festival in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and with Brazilian pianist Rúbia Santos, with whom she founded the Belle Donne Piano Duo. She has also recorded a compact disc of Latin American music for piano and cello with the First Prize Laureate of the Ninth Sphinx National Competition, cellist Gabriel E. Cabezas, for the White Pine Music recording label. In recent years, Ms. Mascolo-David has centered her repertoire around the evocative piano music of Portuguese and Brazilian composers, especially that of Francisco Mignone. She is in the forefront of presenting Mignone’s piano music, and her performances, especially of his Valsas brasileiras (Brazilian Waltzes), have been widely praised. Her compact disc recording of Volume One of the Valsas brasileiras was praised by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Young Portuguese pianist Alexandra Mascolo-David’s debut disc is a treasure . . . she plays them [the waltzes] with a poetic, almost improvisatory spirit, in full command of the composer’s urbane voice . . . a notable disc . . . .”
Volume Two of the Valsas brasileiras was released in January of 2007. Ms. Mascolo-David also recently received a Research Excellence Grant from Central Michigan University to record Francisco Mignone’s 4 Fantasias Brasileiras(Brazilian Fantasies) for piano and orchestra with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra for the White Pine Music recording label. Ms. Mascolo-David is also committed to performing and recording works by living composers, some of whom have written and dedicated pieces to her. Most recently she performed works by American composers Daniel McCarthy, Derek Bermel, David Gillingham, Augusta Read Thomas, Missy Mazzoli, and David Maslanka. In November 2003 she performed Maslanka’s “Concerto No.1 for Piano, Winds, and Percussion” with the Illinois State University Wind Symphony, directed by Steve Steele, at Illinois State University. The work was recorded for the Albany Records label and released in 2005. Noting this performance, the American Record Guide wrote, “Ms. Mascolo-David dispatches the difficult solo part with alarming ease.”
Ms. Mascolo-David holds a piano diploma from the Oporto Conservatory of Music, Portugal, and the Doctor of Musical Arts in piano from the University of Kansas, where her teacher was Sequeira Costa. She has also studied with Edna Golandsky in New York City, and Joseph Gurt of Eastern Michigan University. Ms. Mascolo-David has served on the piano faculties of Iowa State University and of the Interlochen Arts Camp. She currently teaches piano at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant. She is also the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the First Prize in the Piano Competition of Braga, Portugal, the 2001 Provost’s Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity, and the 2007 President’s Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity, both from Central Michigan University. Alexandra Mascolo-David is also a devoted teacher, whose students have achieved much success in auditions, competitions, and in the professional world.