There will be four hands on one piano for the closing of this season's Musical Mornings series in Coquitlam.
Next week, host Sarah Hagen will end her second round of classical music duets at the Evergreen Cultural Centre with fellow pianist Isabelle O'Connell, who has been hailed as "the young Irish piano phenom."
The duo met in 2003 during a residency program at the Banff Centre for the Arts and "we've stayed in touch ever since," O'Connell said.
For their performances at the Port Theatre in Nanaimo on April 8 and at the Evergreen Cultural Centre the next day, the pair will play "a really lovely program," O'Connell said, that includes Mozart's Andante and Variations, Schubert's Fantasie, Dolly Suite by Faure, a sonata by Poulenc and Gershwin's I Got Rhythm Variations.
"The repertoire for piano four-hands is really wonderful and I'm delighted to be performing some of these gems with Sarah," O'Connell said.
After the show, O'Connell returns to her native Ireland for a performance in Dublin and, next month, she will be at the Gilmore Piano Festival in Michigan.
Currently on the faculties of the Lucy Moses (Kaufman Center) and Diller-Quaile Schools of Music in New York, where she teaches piano, theory and chamber music, O'Connell is best known for her contemporary classical music workshops and adjudication.
O'Connell is the last to appear as part of Hagen's Musical Mornings salon shows in Coquitlam, which since last October have included cellist Rebecca Wenham, violinist Joan Blackman, soprano Robyn Driedger-Klassen and Oto Carrillo, a horn player.
Hagen said plans are already underway for her third series at Evergreen, starting next fall.
Tickets to see Sarah Hagen and Isabelle O'Connell on Wednesday, April 9 at 10 a.m. are $20. Call the Evergreen box office at 604-927-6555 or visit evergreenculturalcentre.ca.
