Concert features student, teacher duets

Thermopolis will be the site of the premiere performance of a musical piece composed by Janet Ahlquist, internationally recognized classical pianist, who grew up in Thermopolis and now lives in Pennsylvania.

On Tuesday, March 7, Thermopolis native Janet Ahlquist will perform alongside one of her students, Andre Bohren. In addition to performing solo pieces, Ahlquist and Bohren will also do four-hand, a style of duet with both players on the same piano.

Prior to the evening concert, Bohren and Ahlquist will present workshops for middle school and high school music classes.

Ahlquist will share her piece, “Ode to Native Americans,” which she wrote for piano and percussion based on her childhood experience seeing tribal dances of the Shoshone Indians. While Ahlquist performs on piano, Bohren will provide background and percussion.

Ahlquist explained, with regard to her composition, “I begin and end the piece with the call of the Mourning Dove and other bird calls. Then, a brief excerpt from the ‘Cradle Song’ from the Kwakiuti Tribe. That leads into my own tune and variations, peaceful, but ominous. Then comes the dance section with percussion and strong rhythms. I quote a section of ‘The Song of the Horse’ from the Navajo Indians. They believed the music would make them run faster, as hunters and warriors. They strongly believed in the force of music to inspire, to transport humans.

“Music from different cultures have their unique qualities, but all have many similarities that unite us — from children’s play songs to patriotic songs, to songs without words that inspire our imagination.

“My students are from many different cultures — Iran, China, India, Russia. I’m interested that our lives incorporate these different cultures, so I often include music from those cultures in my presentations.”

She further stated her piece is “specific to seeing the Native American dances during the August ‘Wedding of the Waters’ in [Hot Springs State] Park.”

The concert is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at the auditorium. To give everyone a chance to attend the event, there are no tickets. Attendees can pay whatever they feel they can afford. As always, all students are free.

Ahlquist, now an internationally acclaimed pianist, was born in Worland and began piano lessons in Thermopolis when she was in first grade. Her first piano performance in front of a public audience was at the Pioneer Home in Hot Springs State Park “at the age of eight or nine,” she said. She won a local Kiwanis Stars of Tomorrow contest then went on to perform at the national competition in Miami.

“After high school,” she stated, “I attended freshman year at Oberlin, in Ohio. I met a New York guy and we married that summer. We moved to N.Y. — I became a scholarship student at Juilliard. We had our three children as undergrads. He took a job in New Hampshire and I commuted to Cambridge to complete an Artist Diploma. Then I did my Masters and Doctoral work at the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, N.Y. She was awarded the prestigious Performer’s Certificate and the Artist Diploma from Longy School in Cambridge. 

She has performed solo and chamber music recitals at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Recital Hall, Library of Congress and Harvard University plus numerous international engagements in Portugal, Russia and France, where she won a top prize at the French Piano Institute’s Festival International in Paris.

Bohren, whose early musical interests were Peruvian flute and 1950’s rock, was born in New Orleans but settled with his family in Casper at age 12. He said Ahlquist was his teacher through the formative years of his learning the piano. Bohren was 13 when he started studying with Ahlquist, who was teaching at Casper College at the time.

Ahlquist was fulltime faculty at the college from 1992-2002, teaching theory, piano ensemble, piano, and class piano. She also served as artistic director of the Casper Chamber Music Society. She received a Governor’s Arts Award for her work with the Wyoming Arts Council and Arts in Education programming.

Though Bohren picked up the piano before he began working with her, Ahlquist spotted his potential, and his interest in piano blossomed under her tutelage during his high school and early college years. At 16, he was featured piano soloist performing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue” with the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. Ahlquist also had him competing at the state level and representing Wyoming at regional competitions. He toured the United States and Europe with his father, blues-folk musician Spencer Bohren, for several years.

Bohren said he doesn’t read music very well and plays largely by ear, and Ahlquist was the first teacher who taught him to really play music, not just what’s written on the page. After moving to New Orleans in 2001, Bohren founded eclectic funk-rock band Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes. He manned drums and percussion. During the next decade, the band released six albums. They toured the country, playing such venues as Red Rocks Amphitheater, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and New York’s Knitting Factory. He also plays drums with other musicians but has taken on a few students and, as part of his instruction, tells them about techniques he learned from Ahlquist.

In 2012, he returned to studying classical piano at Loyola University and the University of New Orleans, where he completed his degree in music studies.

Bohren noted he’s been coming to Thermopolis since he was a kid, and performing here over the past few years. He always enjoys coming here, and loves the contrast of being here as a kid and as an adult. The concert will be something of a reunion, he added, as he hasn’t seen her in nearly a decade.

The concert is sponsored by Hot Springs Greater Learning Foundation with grants from Wyoming Arts Council through funding from the Wyoming State Legislature and National Endowment for the Arts; Hot Springs County Education Endowment; Hot Springs Travel & Tourism; Pinnacle Bank; and Broadway Bygones.