Lankan pianist’s solo recital in London

Dr. Tanya Ekanayaka, Sri Lanka’s outstanding and award-winning concert pianist-composer (also a musicologist and highly qualified linguist), is billed to make her third appearance at London’s famed concert venue St. Martin-in-the-Fieldswith a solo recital on October 25. She will perform on invitation by St. Martin-in-the-Fields and her recital will be for the prestigious ‘Pianists of the World’ series where she will represent Sri Lanka.

This is the oldest running recital series of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, a series she performed in 2010 as well and founded by the legendary Dame Myra Hess.

Audience

Dr. Ekanayaka performed to capacity audience at the venue in 2010 and 2012. She has evolved a set of new compositions for solo piano to complete her maiden album comprising her own compositions.

Her delightful program for the recital includes Haydn’s Sonata in D Major Hob. XVI: 37, Beethoven’s Bagatelle WoO 59 “Für Elise”, Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G minor Op. 23, Debussy’s L’Isejoyeuse and the world premiere of two of her own compositions, ‘Vannam(Gajaga, Hanuma, Mayura) You’and ‘In Lotus:Olu PipilaWith Moment’.

The distinguishing feature of Dr. Ekanayaka’s recitals is that they incorporate her own compositions representing a novel musical genre. Her compositions within a recital program comprise adaptations of melodies belonging to indigenous and popular Sri Lankan music (most of which have never been adapted for the piano or harmonised), with musical motifs inspired by a particular aspect salient to each of the other works that form a given recital program she is performing.

Her compositions also function as a ‘link’ serving to unite at an experiential level the diverse works featured in a recital program. Dr. Ekanayaka regards her compositions as deeply autobiographical and a result of her multilingualism (she is a native speaker of English and Sinhala), multicultural background, being ambidextrous and experiencing partial colour synaesthesia.

Her compositions evolve spontaneously and as a whole when she is at the piano often within a few minutes.

Back in the summer of 2012, Dr. Ekanayaka debuted in the USA with a solo recital to a capacity audience at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC which was followed by a performance at the Asia Society Concert Hall in New York. The program for her Kennedy Center debut incorporated the world premiere of two of her own compositions.

Distinction

Dr. Ekanayaka also holds the distinction of being the composer of the first composition for the piano by a Sri Lankan composer to be performed at St. Martin-in-the-Fields (2010) and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC (2012) respectively.

She has been on the teaching faculty of Edinburgh University since 2007 where she has taught part-time in its departments of Linguistics and Music. Since 2012, Dr. Ekanayaka has also been developing a pioneering and so far highly successful music project on a purely voluntary basis aimed at empowering traumatised as well as underprivileged Sri Lankan children and youth recovering from the horrific terrorism that ravaged the nation for over 30 years.