Stephanie Trick and Paolo Alderighi perform Broadway and Hollywood in Four Hands

International Piano sensations, Stephanie Trick and Paolo Alderighi, take you back to the times when Broadway and Hollywood vied not only for actors, captivating sets, and good scripts, but also for songs to hum on the way out of the theater.

When singer Al Jolson broke the silent film sound barrier in The Jazz Singer, composers like George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, and others became active on Broadway and then also in Hollywood. Jazz and songs of the silver screen and stage became intertwined. The popular songs lent themselves to interpretation by jazz music greats, who helped the songs become the classics known today.

In this concert, Stephanie and Paolo join forces to bring you new arrangements of the great early Broadway and Hollywood songs, with piano styles ranging from ragtime to stride, boogie-woogie to blues, swing, even more jazz.

With one piano, two musicians, and entertaining four-hand choreography, Stephanie and Paolo sweep through the songs that lit the musical world on fire, songs like the catchy ”Alexander's Ragtime Band,” the lilting “Meet Me in St. Louis,” the clever sparring songs from Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies,  as well as the pulsating melodies from Show Boat, West Side Story, and many other memorable musicals. The Piano Duo’s fast-paced performance is technically demanding, musically appealing, and also fun to watch.

About the Artists

Stephanie Trick, from St. Louis, a leading exponent of stride piano, and Paolo Alderighi, from Milan, one of Italy’s foremost jazz pianists, met at a piano festival in Switzerland in 2008. Pioneers in the use of four-hands piano in jazz, they have earned widespread esteem for their arrangements of classics from the stride piano, ragtime, and boogie-woogie traditions, as well as from the Swing Era, the Golden Age of Tin Pan Alley, and the Great American Songbook. Recently, they have focused on songs written in the 1920s through the 1960s, the Golden Age of both Broadway and Hollywood Cinema, a creative high-point when musicals were at the heart of America’s popular music culture. Blending impeccable technique with mature musicality, Stephanie and Paolo perform across the United States, Europe, and Asia, winning the acclaim of critics and fans alike.

Their first recordings explored four-hands duets on one piano, a style rarely used in jazz. Their 2018 two-piano album, Broadway and More, featuresoriginal arrangements of Broadway shows from the '20s to '50s, along with popular songs from Italy, England, and the US. The Duo’s latest release I Love Erroll, I Love James P. is a double album dedicated to two legendary jazz piano masters, Erroll Garner and the “Father of Stride” James P. Johnson. The couple releases videos of their work on their Patreon channel (TrickAlderighi) and, this year, a new video each week on Youtube (StephanieTrickPaoloAlderighi).

Originally trained in classical piano, Stephanie Trick and Paolo Alderighi are now ambassadors of early Jazz and American popular music in its heyday. With expertise and enthusiasm, they are dedicated to sharing this rich musical history with audiences of all ages, everywhere.

I love to hear Stephanie and Paolo together. They are an inspiration. Such sympatico! Such back-and-forth! Individually they are marvelous musicians—we’ve known that, but together they play 4-handed stride as it’s never been done. Brava, bravo! – Dick Hyman

It is unusual to hear a piano duet that is played by four hands on just one piano. Somehow Stephanie Trick and Paolo Alderighi manage this near-impossible feat without getting in each other’s way. Their playing is very complementary and mutually inspiring with plenty of fireworks being felt along the way. In their individual careers and together in this collaboration, Paolo and Stephanie keep the rich legacies of ragtime, stride piano, and swing alive, fresh and creative. ... – Scott Yanow

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Photo credit: Cosimo Filippini