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The original works of Fats Waller, George Gershwin, and other jazz masters come to life again under the watch and care of Paul Posnak and Anita Castiglione. They will be performing memorable and historic compositions on two Steinway grand pianos at the Taft Recital Hall (Berkshire Music School), 30 Wendell Ave., Pittsfield Mass. The newly refurbished hall is the perfect setting for works of this magnitude with artists as accomplished as Paul and Anita.
An award-winning interpreter of classical music –including classic jazz--, Paul Posnak is internationally renowned for his improvisations and note-for-note transcriptions of the great jazz pianist-composers of the 1920s and 1930s. His reconstructions of the brilliant solo improvisations of George Gershwin and Thomas “Fats” Waller from the old studio recordings and radio broadcasts have established him as a world authority. Of his CD “Gershwin’s Piano Improvisations”, The Washington Post said: "It is remarkably like having Gershwin himself in digital stereo". His transcriptions of 16 of Fats Waller’s greatest solos have been re-issued in their second edition by Hal Leonard. And, Clavier said of his Naxos CD, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, “Posnak’s performances have the spontaneous character so necessary for Waller’s music, and he breezes through the hard-to-play passages with all the facility and verve of Liszt”.
Anita Castiglione’s career as a soloist, collaborative pianist, choral accompanist, and music educator began with piano studies in Massachusetts at the age of six. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Miami, a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School, and a doctoral degree in Collaborative Piano from the University of Miami Frost School of Music She has performed extensively as a soloist and collaborative pianist throughout the United States, performing master works of Schumann and Beethoven, among others. She recently collaborated with her husband, Paul Posnak, on a new recording, “Gershwin for Two”, featuring his arrangements of the Gershwin Songbook for two pianos, and Gershwin’s own two-piano arrangement of “An American in Paris”. Anita and Paul perform frequently as duo-pianists.