This summer, Dranoff 2 Piano Fusion and Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami came together for Summer Dances & 2 Pianos, our first collaboration and a powerful reminder of what can happen when artistic organizations step outside their individual disciplines and create together. Featuring piano duo Stephanie & Saar alongside the dancers of Dimensions, the electric performance created conversation long after the final note. Among the evening’s four world premier ballets presented

Jazz, Ravel and a Little Boogie Woogie The Dranoff connection to today’s Music Monday runs unusually deep. Canadian husband and wife duo Marcel and Elizabeth Bergmann were laureates of the 4th Murray Dranoff International Two Piano Competition right here in Miami. Years later, Marcel returned not as a competitor but as a commissioned composer, writing Urban Pulse as the required work for the 10th Dranoff Competition in 2005. And in between, the two served as Artistic Direct

When Two Pianos Meet an Orchestra Francis Poulenc composed his Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in 1932 thanks to a commission from the Princess de Polignac, one of the great arts patrons of Paris. It was a romp from the start: witty, irreverent, full of jazz inflections and music hall charm, with a second movement of such unexpected tenderness that audiences hardly knew what had hit them. Poulenc himself said he wanted it to be “gay and not profound.” He succeeded spe

Some piano duos are built in the practice room. This one was built at the Palace of Versailles. When Lang Lang and Gina Alice Redlinger married in June 2019, guests at their reception got something most wedding audiences do not: a live debut performance by two of the world’s finest pianists sitting down at the same keyboard for the very first time. Lang Lang needs little introduction. The Chinese-born pianist who filled in for an ailing soloist at 17 and became an overnight s

On November 23, 1781, in a Viennese drawing room, a twenty-five-year-old Mozart sat down at one of two pianos and played a piece he had written for that evening. His partner was his student Josepha von Auernhammer. The piece was the Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K. 448, the most important work in the history of the genre. Before that night, two-piano music barely existed. The second instrument changed everything: each pianist could now command the full keyboard, tossing m

Before the curtain even rises, Summer Dances & 2 Pianos is already making headlines! This week, Artburst Miami spotlighted the first-ever collaboration between Dranoff 2 Piano Fusion and Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami, calling attention to the artistic partnership bringing live music and contemporary dance together on one stage. The feature explores how this groundbreaking production was born, the creative dialogue between dancers and pianists, and why both organizations s