LEWISTON — Ksenia Kostelanetz and Chiharu Naruse will present the third annual Frank Glazer Memorial Steinway Concert at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 24, at the Dolard & Priscilla Gendron Franco Center, 46 Cedar St. This free concert will open the 17th season at the Gendron Franco Center and will be held in the performance hall, which now houses two Steinway grand pianos. Together, the two pianists will play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor.” Ksenia’s solo concert pieces will include works by Bach, Chopin and Rachmaninov.

Glazer, who played the inaugural concert on the center’s Steinway piano in 2006 and returned every year to present solo concerts, died in January 2015, weeks shy of his 100th birthday. Ksenia was his youngest student and took lessons from him for several summers while in Maine. Naruse of Gray, Ksenia’s current teacher, was also a student of Glazer.

Kostelanetz, who is 16 years of age, began her piano lessons at age 4. Fluent in French and Russian, she has attended school in France and visited France and Russia several times. This fall, she will begin taking classes at Marquette University. She spends her summers with her family in Greene. She was born in Indianapolis to a musical family of immigrants from St. Petersburg, Russia. The family resides permanently in Wisconsin.   

Among the musicians in Kostelanetz’s family was the renowned conductor, Andre Kostelanetz, best known to modern audiences for a series of easy listening instrumental albums on Columbia Records from the 1940s until 1980.

Naruse, a native of Japan, studied in Germany with Klaus Baessler and received master’s degrees in music performance and in music instruction from the Hochschule für Musik “Hans Eisler” in Berlin, where she also studied vocal accompaniment. In 2002, she came to the United States to study with Glazer.

In addition to her solo appearances, she is a well-respected chamber musician and coach, teacher and juror at music competitions.

“We will once again present this season-opening performance as a gift to the community and hope that everyone will attend,” Mitchell Clyde Thomas, the executive director, said.

The doors will open and the bar will be open at 6 p.m.

No tickets are needed. 

FMI: 207-783-1585