WILMINGTON — Wilmington College and The Murphy Theatre are partnering to present concert pianist Giuliano Graniti and the Cincinnati-based Wayside Winds woodwind quintet on Tuesday, April 5 at 7:30 p.m. at the downtown theatre.

It’s called “Around the World with Piano and Woodwinds”. The concert is sponsored through a gift from Bill and Penny Kincaid. He is an emeritus professor of mathematics at Wilmington College. Tickets are $12 and can be purchased on the Murphy Theatre’s website at www.themurphytheatre.org .

Giuliano Graniti

A native of Italy, Graniti has performed concerts around the world and recorded a wide range of piano repertoire.

Graniti’s performance will include music composed by German composer Robert Schumann and Native American composer Louis W. Ballard.

Graniti has taught piano at Wilmington College, and currently serves as a visiting professor in piano at the Townsend School of Music at Mercer University in Georgia.

Graniti moved his first steps in music in southern Italy.

His concert activity as a soloist and as a chamber music pianist led him to play in many venues in Italy and around Europe. Those include Teatro Comunale in Florence, Villa Walton in Ischia, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Auditorium del Parco in L’Aquila, as well as Yamaha Concert Hall and Erbahr Saal in Vienna, Lisztzentrum in Raiding, and Auditorium RSI in Lugano.

He has collaborated with ensembles like the Quartetto di Cremona, the Quodlibet String Trio, and conductors like Riccardo Muti, Xian Zhang, Marc Kissoscki and Russel Davies.

In 2018, he was invited by the Iranian conductor Mohammad Shelechi to perform at Vahdat Hall in Tehran pieces by Loris Tjeknavorian, at the presence of the composer himself, for celebrating his 80th birthday.

He recorded Grand Pianola Music by John Adams with the pianist Fabio Menchetti and the CCM Wind Symphony in Cincinnati, conducted by Kevin Holzman. Other recordings feature Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for RSI Swiss Radio; Bartok’s Contrasts with Ekaterina Valiulina and Nikolett Urban, again for RSI Swiss Radio; a selection of Chopin’s Preludes op. 28 for Universitaet Mozarteum in Salzburg; and works by Liszt, Debussy, Beethoven and Brahms.

His career as a pianist walks parallel to his activity as a teacher and scholar. As an ultimate goal, he aims to help and encourage students and audiences to catch and share the highest knowledge of the repertoire in all its aspects.

For this reason, one of his favorite performance formulae is lecture-recital. He collaborated with the Italian musicologist Guido Barbieri for a project on Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, performing in a tournée around Italy and recording the show for the Italian National Radio RAI.

Besides working on topics about repertoire, he likes the multi-disciplinary potential of music. One of his later projects features the combination of atonal technique and the Native American music in the pieces of Alberto Ginastera and Louis W. Ballard as an example of negotiation between cultural identities.

​Nevertheless, a considerable part of his time and work is dedicated to teaching. As a researcher on pedagogical subjects, he has worked on inclusive strategies for students with special needs. One of his latest works focuses on a case study in teaching students with visual impairments, in collaboration with several other people.

Wayside Winds

The Wayside Winds are a group of friends and professional musicians in Cincinnati who have come together to have fun making music. While dedicated to performing the canon of woodwind quintet music, they also spice up each performance with something new and different.

Wayside Winds are Annie Darlin Gordon, flute; Austin Smith, oboe; Laura Sabo, clarinet; Carol Aufmann, bassoon; and Emily Toth, French horn. Their program will feature “Quartet for Winds by Jean Francaix, “Travel Notes 2” by Richard Rodney Bennett and “Motion” by Alyssa Morris.