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Elaine Comparone

by Gerry Kaplan last modified 2006-04-09 09:53 PM

Harpsichord, Artistic Director

Since her acclaimed New York debut as a Concert Artists Guild award winner, harpsichordist Elaine Comparone has maintained a varied career as recitalist, soloist with orchestra, chamber musician, recording artist, teacher,collaborator with composers, choreographers and video artists, and founder-director of Harpsichord Unlimited, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the harpsichord, its history and its music. "Elaine Comparone Plays Red-Blooded Harpsichord" headlined The New York Times review of her recital debut and Pulitzer Prize-winner Donal Henahan called her a "harpsichordist with few equals..." (The New York Times).

Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts into a family of musicians, she began piano studies at age four with her mother. As a child she played violin, flute (with her father, a professional flutist, as teacher) and pipe organ; but it was not untill her student years at Brandeis University that she discovered and fell in love with the harpsichord. Her success with that instrument resulted in a Fulbright Fellowship to study with harpsichordist Isolde Ahlgrimm at the Academy of Music in Vienna.

As founding member of "Bach with Pluck!", Trio Bell'Arte and The Queen's Chamber Band, she has taken her harpsichords to performances in every state of the continental US. She has served as organist/choir director of the First Moravian Church in New York City for over ten years.

A recipient of Solo Recitalist and Recording Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, she has given solo recitals at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Merkin Concert Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, 92nd Street YW-YMHA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dayton Art Institute and the Library of Congress, to name a few.

She has enjoyed guest appearances with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York Virtuosi Chamber Symphony, Washington Chamber Symphony and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra among others. Her collaboration with the New York Virtuosi included an annual series and residency at Columbia University's Miller Theater. In October, 1993, she stepped in at the last minute to replace the harpsichordist of the all-woman Vivaldi Orchestra of Moscow for its first American tour and Lincoln Center debut. Since 1974 when she won an unprecedented grant for the purchase of a van from the Rockefeller Fund for Music, she has taken her harpsichords to performances in every state of the continental US.