Kit Bridges, pianist
Chorale’s spring concert has a hefty title: The Four B’s: Bach, Bruckner, Brahms, and Bridges. “Bridges” refers to our pianist, Kit Bridges, who will perform Brahms’ Four Quartets for Four Voices and Piano, opus 92, with Chorale, as a major portion of our program. Completed in 1884, these quartets showcase the composer’s brilliant and idiomatic writing for piano (Brahms was an accomplished pianist himself), which in turn showcases Kit’s brilliant playing, too seldom heard in the context of his role as Chorale’s rehearsal accompanist.
I first became aware of Kit when I was a new graduate student in voice at Northwestern University. I arrived on campus with no particular strategy or goals, other than earning an advanced degree which would allow me to teach on the college level. I had not investigated the school’s voice teachers nor secured a spot in one of their studios, and was not at all aware of who the pianists were — I was really green, and was assigned whoever was left after the more strategic students had laid dibs on the desired situations. It didn’t take me long to realize I had made a mistake, that not all teachers and pianists were alike. However naive I was about the process, I was not naive and unformed when it came to musical taste and goals; and I didn’t fit well where I had landed.
Attendance at studio and degree recitals was a necessary part of my graduate school experience, and I soon became aware of who was doing what I liked. Kit was the regular accompanist for one of the voice studios, and I only had to hear him once to realize that he was the pianist/collaborator for me. He played with personality and conviction, warmth and mystery, and had the chops to handle whatever the singers threw at him. He was supportive and responsive with singers, but never neutral. He was the real deal: a top flight pianist who actually enjoyed working with singers. I wasn’t able to collaborate with him, myself, until I had finished my degree — but once I had, the dam broke, and I seldom performed, at least in Chicago, with any other pianist after that.
I participated for a couple of summers in a program called “International Festival of the Art Song,” held on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It consisted of a week of masterclasses, plus a number of recitals, presented both by the master teachers (Gérard Souzay, Elly Ameling, and Dalton Baldwin were the artistic core of the festival) and by selected students. My first year, I went alone, and was assigned a pianist — again, not realizing that this was something I should have strategized in advance. My first time up, we sang and played Fauré’s “En sourdine”, which begins with a few bars of piano introduction. We had barely begun — I don’t think I had sung a note — when Dalton sighed, asked the pianist to move over, sat up to the keyboard himself, and played it through while I sang. I was in heaven. This was music; this was collaborative art, between singer, pianist, poet, and composer. I had never personally experienced anything this magical, and I was hooked. The pianist matters, is an equal partner. I ended up going to France to study with Souzay and Baldwin; I also ended up returning to the festival the following summer with Kit in tow. On the purest, highest plane, this is why I do music. Dalton was so impressed with Kit, he suggested we make a CD (we never did; I never felt up to Kit’s standard). Over the following years, Dalton chose concert programs for us, pianistically challenging works by Schumann, Schubert, Wolf, Brahms — he felt Kit was particularly good in this repertoire. I remember once when we were working on some Mahler, his playing was so beautiful I broke down in tears — I couldn’t believe I was part of something so transcendent.
Kit and I have worked together now for nearly forty years. He is never less than wonderful; he is at his best in Brahms. Come and hear what he does with us! June 8, 3 PM.