Central Michigan University

Alexandra Mascolo-David

Central Michigan University School of Music faculty member Alexandra Mascolo-David has performed and led workshops and master classes in Europe, Asia and the Americas. She has given solo recitals in Brazil, China, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Spain and the United States, including a New York debut recital at Carnegie Hall in May 2004, which received a favorable review in The New York Concert Review. She has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in Peru and the USA and has completed five years of engagements with the CMU-based Orpheus Piano Trio.

Her other collaborative performances have included concerts at the Fontana Chamber Arts Summer Festival in Kalamazoo, Mich., and with Brazilian pianist Rubia Santos, with whom she founded the Belle Donne Piano Duo. She also has recorded a compact disc of Latin American music for piano and cello with cellist Gabriel E. Cabezas, the First Prize Laureate of the Ninth Sphinx National Competition, for CMU's White Pine Music recording label.

In recent years, Mascolo-David has centered her repertoire around the evocative piano music of Portuguese and Brazilian composers, especially that of Francisco Mignone. She is in the forefront of presenting Mignone's piano music, and her performances, especially of his "Valsas Brasileiras" (Brazilian Waltzes), have been widely praised. Her compact disc recording of Volume One of the "Valsas Brasileiras" was praised by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Volume Two of the "Valsas Brasileiras" was released in January 2007. Mascolo-David recently received a $95,000 CMU Research Excellence grant to record Mignone's "Brazilian Fantasies" for piano and orchestra with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, scheduled for summer 2009 release on the White Pine Music label.

Mascolo-David also performs and records works by living composers, some of whom have written and dedicated pieces to her. Most recently she performed works by American composers Daniel McCarthy, Derek Bermel, David Gillingham, Augusta Read Thomas and David Maslanka.

She received the Provost's Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity from CMU in 2001 and the President's Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity from CMU in 2007.

For more information regarding Mascolo-David, visit her Web site: http://www.mascolo-david.com