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The American pianist, composer and author, Lenny Cavallaro, studied with Donald Currier, Bruce Simonds, Louis Crowder, James Miltenberger, and Claude Frank. He was awarded a Foundation Fellowship and earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance and literature from West Virginia University. A top prize-winner in the J.S. Bach International Competition for Pianists, he subsequently performed that composer’s Six Partitas (BWV 825-830) to high critical acclaim at Carnegie Recital Hall.
Lenny Cavallaro’s compositions have also garnered considerable notice for their audacious adherence to 18th- and 19th-century harmonic idioms and form. Indeed, he was hailed as “a throwback to Schubert” by one critic, and has cheerfully acknowledged that most of his music “sounds as though written between 1730 and 1830.” He has recorded J.S. Bach's Six Partitas (BWV 825-830) and Goldberg Variations (BWV 988), along with many of his own compositions. He composed the song Heartbreak Hill (a setting of the poem with the same title by Celia Laighton Thaxter), and Sonata for Violin (1988), among others.
Lenny Cavallaro served as music critic for The New Haven Register from 1976-1985, and also wrote occasional reviews for North Shore: Sunday well into the 1990’s. Among the artists he has covered are the Guarneri String Quartet, Vladimir Horowitz, Itzhak Perlman, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Kiri Te Kanawa, André Watts, and Pinkus Zuckerman. He has lectured frequently on the topics of “Bach on the piano,” “musical compositions,” and “music criticism.”
Lenny Cavallaro is the co-author of two non-fiction volumes and also the author of a novel and a novella, with another publication scheduled for 2009. He served as a by-line political commentator for the Ipswich Observer from 1997 to 1999. He was also the associate editor of The International Journal of Professional Hypnosis from 1986 to 1995, and worked as a literary agent during the 1980’s. At present, he teaches English at Northern Essex Community College. |
