Rocking classical pianists Gregory Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe mark Chan Centre's 25th anniversary
Known for stylized videos, Anderson & Roe Piano Duo is determined to make classical music accessible
Greg Anderson (left) and Elizabeth Joy Roe. Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts presents Anderson & Roe Piano Duo: 25th Anniversary Celebration on March 4 at 8 pm at Chan Shun Concert Hall
DURING GREG ANDERSON and Elizabeth Joy Roe’s two decades together as a musical pair, they have self-produced phenomenal music videos set everywhere from the loading zone of the Steinway & Sons piano factory in Queens, New York (for their 2016 two-piano version of Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off”) to Glendale, California’s Moonlight Rollerway (yes, right in the middle of the roller rink, for their 2017 dual-piano take on Daft Punk’s “Lose Yourself to Dance”). Known as Anderson & Roe Piano Duo, they’re as at ease playing works by the likes of Rachmaninoff, Dvořák, and Bach as they are The Beatles and Queen; as at home with well-known chamber-music pieces as they are their own self-penned compositions. Wildly original and crticially acclaimed for their high level of artistry, the Billboard-topping musicians have a mission—“to make classical music powerful and relevant in society and in our world today”, Roe says during a Zoom interview alongside Anderson with Stir. “I think that’s been the glue that has kept this professional partnership together.
“Obviously there’s the friendship and this connection that we share and the shared joy of creativity and exploration,” she adds, “but certainly this mission to really be acolytes for this music that we love so much and we feel so passionate about is huge.”
Anderson & Roe Piano Duo is coming to Vancouver for a concert in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Chan Centre the Performing Arts. There, the best friends who first met as freshmen at The Juilliard School will inaugurate the venue’s newly acquired Spirio Steinway piano—the high-resolution player piano being a technological dazzler.
The concert program will feature the full gamut that the twosome is known for, with classics, world premieres, cover arrangements (such as the duo’s take on “Let It Be” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney), and a few surprises.
With six albums to date in addition to solo releases, the two have been called the “rock stars” of the classical-music genre, in part because of the way they talk to and interact with audiences wherever they travel. Their technical excellence and innovative arrangements of popular songs are other factors. Then there are those bold, professional-grade videos, some of which have been nominated for Emmy awards and presented at international film festivals. Their portfolio of some 50-plus entries includes an experimental film of the entire Rite of Spring, while they spent a full pre-dawn-to-late-night day outdoors to shoot the video for their stirring four-handed take on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” on a wind-swept field in Montana, then returned the next morning to finish it.
UBC School of Music faculty member David Fung, who is a guest curator for the Chan Centre’s new Spirio Steinway concerts, programmed the duo to launch the series. Donated by the Chan Better World Foundation, the Spirio can capture and play back a performance that is practically indistinguishable from a live show; it can be played remotely and can transmit a performance to other Spirios around the world.
For their Chan Centre debut, Anderson and Roe will premiere their new arrangement of Dvořák’s “Overlay No. 1” and “Overlay No. 2”. The two will perform live on one piano while the Spirio plays along with them, making it a piece for eight hands.
They have performed on a Spirio before, but they are going to showcase the instrument in ways it’s never been used before, Anderson says, drawing from virtual experiments involving multiple pianos that they perfected during the pandemic, each playing from their respective California homes. (He lives with his husband, an emergency doctor; she has a 14-month-old baby, who will be joining her on tour.)
“No matter what your background is in classical music—you can be an aficionado or you could be a total amateur—hopefully you'll find something in our concerts or music videos or compositions that will resonate,” Roe says. “And it’s because we do believe that music can be a very potent form of communication and of synthesizing what's happening in the world around us. It's a way of tapping into this shared humanity.”
Adds Anderson: “It all comes from this desire to invite people into the experience, to demystify what people might assume classical music to be, and to show that this music can have such power to unite people and to stir up new ideas and new ways of looking at the world….We’re connecting with other people but we’re also connecting with these essential emotions that drive so much of who we are as human beings.”
Greg Anderson (right) and Elizabeth Joy Roe. Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco
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