Maestro Marek Jablonski: Tribute to a Mentor—page 3
Several of these performances have been assembled into the first
volume of a CD portrait of Marek Jablonski. A double-CD set,
called Marek Jablonski: The Edmonton Years, Part 1, has been released on the Edmonton
music label Arktos Recordings. Ironically, this last testament of
the artist was first released at a concert at which Jablonski was
scheduled to perform. In October, 1998, plans were made to
establish The Marek Jablonski Prize for Chopin Endowment. Awarded
by the Edmonton branch of the Alberta Registered Music Teachers'
Association (ARMTA), the biennial award is intended to assist
specially gifted students from nominations submitted by ARMTA
teachers. The original vision for the first presentation of the
new award would have seen Jablonski himself take to the stage at
Edmonton's Winspear Centre in the fall of 1999.
When Jablonski died last spring, Jon Kimura Parker, who knew he
would be in western Canada in early 2000, gave the recital his
former mentor could not.
Darting into Edmonton in between dates on a hellish concert
schedule, Parker played, without fee, in tribute to Jablonski.
With that gesture, Parker gave powerful insight into just how
important Jablonski was in the eyes of his students.
"As a teacher, he had this incredible ability to really
enhance the best in you and not to conform you into the
traditional styles," Ayako Tsuruta explains." He just
let you be the person you are, and if somehow, in the case of a
performance, if something did not make sense, then he'd say,
'Well, do you understand exactly what you are doing?' He made you
really understand who you are, and what you are doing as a
performer."
Parker remembers talking to Jablonski about how to play the "Appassionata"
Sonata of Beethoven—a work nearly every pianist plays. "Play
it as if no one has ever heard the work before," Parker says
was his mentor's advice. Corey Hamm remembers that Jablonski
didn't teach him how to play a certain work—but how to express his
own thoughts with it. To find a way for a student to become truly
his or her own person is perhaps the greatest achievement of any
teacher. Marek Jablonski did that for student after student, year
after year.
Heritage Community Foundation Presents
