ESTEVAN — Estevan’s Audrey Andrist keeps scoring big time on the classical music front.
A well-worn upright piano is located near the entrance to a seniors’ home in their common area room. A chair hosting a small stack of magazines in front of it completes the temporary picture.
Within seconds, that piano is brought to new life thanks to the combined talents of a composer named Mozart and a pianist named Audrey Andrist.
That burst of musical energy is suddenly unleashed on an audience of about 40 senior residents of Hill View Manor, where Andrist’s mother Shirley is now a resident, and a few invited guests of varying ages.
That stack of magazines gives Andrist a semi-comfortable perch, providing a proper height for her to complete a 45-minute concert that includes the music of other well-known classical as well as a few jazz and show tune composers, just to mix it up a bit. Each rendering is introduced with a few tidbits of information about the composer before the flying fingers take over.
But what about the musical practitioner we are listening to? What do we know about A. Andrist, that woman from Estevan who now lives in Washington, D.C.?
Her journey has been filled with adventure as well as a lot of hard work. After all, you don’t get a doctorate degree from that well-known musical and theatrical head office at Juilliard in New York City by just showing up to slam out a few chords before heading out to the nearest bar or restaurant to spend the rest of the afternoon, do ya?
So let’s take a small peek into the world of a talented classical pianist who plies this remarkable trade around the globe with an enthusiastic love of music.
As you might expect, it all began in a home that always rang out with music and that’s what attracted Audrey and her sister Rachel to stay on the path that started with their mother, an accomplished pianist, accompanist and organist at St. Paul’s United Church, where she also served as choir director for several years. That venue served as a second home for the four Andrist kids, who all took piano lessons.
Early music lessons with Mary Murakami in the Energy City eventually led to an extension as the discovery was being made that this kid was more than just another piano player. She sought and was rewarded with some weekend classical musical training under the careful, talented eye of Robert Moore in Regina, who had been an adjudicator at the Estevan Music Festival a few times.
So boarding an STC bus (remember them?) on Saturday mornings to travel to Regina for a couple of hours of lessons with Moore became the normal routine until Andrist graduated from high school and entered the University of Regina and their music programs.
Andrist jokes now that she was naïve enough to think that Moore was even willing to work with her, after she had declared, “I want to study with Bill Moore.” It was a good fit. He would spend two hours helping her develop keyboard skills, but only charged for one hour. He knew you didn’t want to restrict the obviously talented young pianists.
She was still naïve enough to figure she had a good shot at gaining entrance to Juilliard a few years later. It never dawned on this hard-working musical student that maybe she wasn’t qualified.
Moore had a few of his former students qualify, and Andrist jokes that “I just assumed I would get in, and it’s hilarious to think about now, but actually I think that was a good attitude in a way because I was less intimidated by the audition than I would have been had I known how hard it was to get in.”
So with a Bachelor of Music degree from U of R, she now pursued and gained a master’s degree at Juilliard before challenging herself again in the successful pursuit of a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree from that same institution.
“I wanted to keep living in New York, and as a Canadian, the only way I could do that was to be a student there, so I got in.”
They accepted three pianists that year. The others were Jamie Parker, now a teacher at the University of Toronto, and Kathy Selby, a talented Australian.
So where has Andrist displayed her skills and what venues has she enjoyed the most?
“I recently performed with my husband James Stern (violinist) at the 2,000-seat Oriental Arts Center in Shanghai, an amazing experience. The piano in the dressing room was fancier than many concert hall pianos I have played.”
The Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress is also a definite highlight site due to the historic space where many well-known musicians have played. “It feels amazing just to be on the stage.”
Another favourite hall is Place des Arts in Montreal and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York, where she played her NY concerto debut with the Juilliard Orchestra.
She admits to being the most nervous before the concert at that New York venue since it was her New York concerto debut.
“I was ridiculously nervous before I went on stage. My teacher, Herbert Stessin, came backstage and said, ‘just enjoy the music.’
“I thought this was crazy, how could I enjoy the music when I was so nervous? But he was absolutely right. That is what you need to do in the moment, listen and enjoy the music and pass that enjoyment on to your audience. I quote him when I am asked to give advice about peak performances. The concert went amazingly well. Dad flew to NY to attend but mom had broken her collarbone and couldn’t travel.”
Competing in CBC’s final round of competition, performing Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, was another huge highlight, she recalls. She collected the silver medal in that musical go-around.
She also easily remembers when composer Andrew MacDonald wrote a piano concerto especially for her, commissioned by the CBC. She played the premiere, of course, with the CBC Vancouver Orchestra under the direction of Mario Bernardi. “Incredibly fun,” she said.
Andrist doesn’t prefer any particular style or setting really. She’ll work solo, duets, trios, chamber musicians or full orchestra. It’s music she loves. She’ll embrace it in whatever form she finds it.
She is often asked who her favourite composers are and is reluctant to give any preferences, but if pressed, she mentions Schumann and Beethoven. “But whatever I am learning or polishing tends to be my favourite music at the moment.”
She generally doesn’t listen to much music outside her work, and that usually consists of six to eight hours per day of rehearsing and polishing works she is approaching next or teaching a few music students. She is currently booked for about 30 appearances in the next few months. She also works with her trio, which used to engage a booking agent for performances, but when the agent retired, the trio decided they could make their own bookings.
So when she gets some valued time off, it’s usually watching sports (especially hockey) or exercising, along with that valued quiet time. She noted she just recently spent some time with a friend at a Washington Nationals baseball game.
Piano preferences?
None really. There are good and not-so-good examples of these unique music producers: Steinway, Baldwin, Fazioli, Yamaha. The brand doesn’t matter because the quality can vary widely, she states emphatically. World-class down to dreadful, she explains. They’re all out there, ready to tease the players.
“If it’s particularly terrible, we pianists call it a ‘piano-shaped object.’”
But there are some memorable moments with particular pianos.
“One of my current favourites is on stage at the Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center. The piano on the stage of the concert hall in Shanghai was also amazing. When James and I performed at Steinway Hall in New York I got to go down to the basement and choose a piano from among six different nine-foot Steinways. That was sooo fun.”
Okay, two final sidebar notes of interest.
It hasn’t always been about no music when she isn’t practising piano.
“I’m a huge Billy Joel fan. I had all his albums in college,” she noted.
Second: You may not want to challenge Audrey Andrist at any vintage video arcade games.
“To take breaks and de-stress after practising six to eight hours a day at the U of R, I would ride my bike to the Arcade downtown. It was new at the time (early 1980s). I would get a big bag of quarters and play Galaga for an hour and got really good at it. Then didn’t play for many years. But years later, travelling with my son, we had a layover in Minneapolis where they had an arcade with vintage games. I played Galaga while my son watched me. He was way more impressed with my Galaga abilities than my piano-playing for sure.”
Well, we guess you can’t impress all the people all the time, especially family members. So, it must be fun for them to witness and be impressed by your hidden talents. Alas, Andrist has never been booked to play Galaga in front of an admiring audience, other than her son, so she’s sticking with the piano for now, and her audiences are grateful she has made that decision.
