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Composers Bureau ArchivesMinuetta KesslerMinuetta Kessler passed away on November 30, 2002. Biography Following her concert at Town Hall, New York, the New York Times stated that "she played a well chosen and exacting program and showed herself a rare phenomenon among the younger pianists of today--more musician than pianist." "Revealed an array of refreshing gifts as keyboard artist and composer" wrote the music critic of the New York World Telegram. Since that time she has toured extensively, appeared as soloist with orchestras, received two Canadian ASCAP Awards for serious composition and the Brookline Library Music Association Prize for a piano TRIO. Her Alberta Concerto for piano and orchestra was performed in Montreal, Toronto, Quebec, Calgary, Regina, and Boston, with the composer as soloist. Thomas Archer, critic of the Montreal Gazette, wrote, "Colorful music, extremely well scored and the composer-pianist gave a really outstanding performance." The Quebec critics stated that, "Her marvelous Concerto inspired the enthusiasm of the audience" and that it was "destined to figure on the programs of the great orchestras of the world." "The richness of this Canadian work and the sumptuousness of its orchestration manifests the vast talent of Minuetta Kessler." . . . "Plays with a power rarely attained by women pianists," was what the Quebec L'Evenment Journal stated. The Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs of the Province of Alberta presented her with the Key to the City of Calgary, and the Lieutentant Governor of Alberta wired her--"Your contribution to the musical world has been outstanding." In June 1975 Minuetta Kessler was invited to celebrate the centennial of her home town, Calgary, by performing her Alberta Concerto with the Calgary Century Symphony Orchestra. Calgary Albertan: "Minuetta Kessler is a most refined pianist and her own Alberta Concerto is in every sense a work of great magnitude. It is a kind of 19th-century romantic piece in four movements in which Kessler's hands were most effectively used. She played with authority, feeling and sensitivity." The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has presented Minuetta Kessler on numerous programs, including the Distinguished Artists, Masters of the Keyboard, and on a special series to Latin America. The Premiere of the Alberta Concerto was broadcast coast to coast in Canada, to Latin America and by WNYC in New York. She presented over fifty solo programs on WNYC and appeared as soloist with orchestra there, with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops and with other orchestras. In March of 1962 she presented an entire program of her own compositions, including a newly commissioned work for chorus, piano and soloists on a text by Gibran, at the Boston Conservatory of Music. In 1975 Northeastern University received an award by the National Federation of Music Clubs for presenting an entire concert of works by Minuetta Kessler as the best program of a woman composer in New England. In addition to compositions released by Transcontinental Music Publications, Minuetta Kessler has invented a music teaching game, STAFTONIA, and has published a very first book for children entitled "Piano is My Name." Further Information
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The musical talents of Minuetta Kessler were discovered by the well known music educator, John M. Williams, who wrote down her original compositions and presented her as a pianist-composer to the public in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, at the age of five. Later she continued her studies with Gladys McKelvie Egbert, winning, at the age of fifteen a scholarship to study with Ernest Hutcheson in New York. After graduating and post graduating as artist and teacher from the Juilliard School of Music she taught there for several years. She studied composition with Ivan Langstroth and received additional piano instruction from Helene Augustin, Miectslav Munz, Anta Dorfmann and Victor Biart.