New Mexico Pianist Richard Atkins Makes Carnegie Hall Debut This October
After more than fifty years in music, pianist, composer, and playwright Richard Atkins is set to fulfill a lifelong dream: a solo debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in New York City on Saturday, October 24, at 8:00 p.m.
Atkins, a New Mexico-based pianist, composer, and playwright, has built a career spanning hotel lounges, concert halls, recording studios, and the theater. He has served as house pianist for Rabbi Berel Levertov and the Chabad community in Santa Fe for the past year. He is also known for two stage plays with strong Jewish themes — The Men of Mah Jongg, about four Jewish senior men who find friendship and purpose around a Mah Jongg table, and DeliKateSSen, which follows two Auschwitz survivors whose New York City delicatessen is forced to confront the past when a German deli opens across the street. Both plays have had productions across the country, including runs in New York, Pennsylvania, California, South Carolina, and New Mexico, and Atkins has since adapted them for the screen.
In 2016, Atkins was instrumental in bringing Belgian Holocaust survivor Simon Gronowski to New Mexico, where Gronowski spoke about escaping a Nazi deportation train bound for Auschwitz at venues including Congregation Albert in Albuquerque and Alevy Chabad Jewish Center in Las Cruces. Known as "the child of the 20th convoy," Gronowski was 11 years old in April 1943 when Belgian resistance fighters stopped the train — the only deportation train attacked by resistance forces in Western Europe during the war — and his mother pushed him to safety before she and his sister were later killed at Auschwitz. He went on to become a lawyer and jazz pianist, and his escape later inspired the opera Push by composer Howard Moody.
The Weill Hall program will mix classical works, Atkins's own compositions, and his arrangements of composers who shaped his musical voice, including Henry Mancini, Michel Legrand, and John Williams. The performance is presented by Barry P. Debany, a longtime supporter of Atkins's, who underwrote the hall rental. Atkins later partnered with Education Through Music, a long-running New York City nonprofit that brings music education to children who might not otherwise have access to it; net proceeds from the concert will benefit the organization. Debany also arranged a donation to ETM and the evening will feature a guest performance by Jason Afovi, a young Bronx pianist selected by ETM, who will play a solo and join Atkins for a duet.
Atkins, who lived in New York City with his family for years, is inviting the Jewish community to join him for what he describes as a milestone decades in the making — and, characteristically, a chance to gather and celebrate Jewish culture, creativity, and perseverance together.
Tickets for the October 24 concert are on sale now through Carnegie Hall's website; seating at the 268-seat venue is limited and assigned.
Sources: Richard Atkins; Santa Fe New Mexican; MainlyPiano.com; Carnegie Hall; BroadwayWorld; Wikipedia (Simon Gronowski).
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Shabbat with Friends: Recapturing Together the Joy of Shabbat
New Mexico Jewish Historical Society
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