Le Petit Salon Concert Series presents violinist Joana Genova and pianist Willis Delony

Name: Le Petit Salon Concert Series presents violinist Joana Genova and pianist Willis Delony
Start: 2025-03-12T18:00:00-05:00
Location: 4436 Perrier St. New Orleans

Schedule

Wed, 12 Mar, 2025 at 06:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

4436 Perrier St. New Orleans | New Orleans, LA

Violinist Joana Genova and pianist Willis Delony will present an exciting program featuring the lush and deeply emotional sonatas for violin and piano by former New Orleans resident and local favorite Stephen Dankner. The concert also includes jazz-inflected music by pianist Delony along with works by Genova’s Bulgarian countrymen that showcase her dazzling virtuosity.
Bulgarian-born violinist JOANA GENOVA has built a diverse career as a chamber and orchestral musician, soloist, and pedagogue. She is co-artistic director of Taconic Music in Manchester, Vermont and currently teaches at Montclair State University, Williams College, and Bennington College. She served as Assistant Professor and Director of string activities at the University of Indianapolis from 2017 to 2022. Joana is the second violinist of the critically acclaimed The Indianapolis Quartet, concertizes with Williams and Taconic Chamber Players, and appears as a frequent guest at festivals and concert series throughout the U.S. and Europe.

In 2022 and 2023, Joana and pianist Willis Delony recorded The Complete Violin Sonatas of Stephen Dankner, which was released in 2024 on the Centaur Records label.

As soloist, Joana has been featured with the Metropolitan, Rockaway, Danbury, and Berkshire symphonies, Adelphi Chamber Orchestra, Harlem Chamber Players, Manchester Festival Orchestra, Yonkers Philharmonic, and under the baton of Raymond Leppard with the University of Indianapolis Gala Orchestra. Joana has been principal second violin of the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra in Massachusetts since 2007 was a member of Amsterdam Bach Consort, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Brooklyn Philharmonic and New Haven Symphony. She has appeared as a guest concertmaster of Carmel Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and Louisiana Philharmonic, and Viva Bach Festival.

Joana made her solo debut at age 12 with the Plovdiv Chamber Orchestra and is a top prizewinner of the Svetoslav Obretenov National Competition in Bulgaria. She earned her bachelor’s degree at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and her master’s in chamber music at the Rotterdam Conservatory. Joana performs on a Johannes Cuypers violin made in The Hague in 1786.

In a performing career spanning over five decades, pianist WILLIS DELONY has won acclaim as a leading classical/jazz crossover artist. His innovative concert explorations of the two musical worlds are showcased in a series of solo piano recordings on the Centaur label. A New World A’ Comin’ – Classical and Jazz Connections was released in 2001. Double Dance – Classical and Jazz Connections II was released in 2008. Out of Character – Classical and Jazz Connections III, was released in October 2014. Also part of the series is an independent release from 2018 entitled Butterfly Room – Connections for Solo Piano. The project continues with Between the Notes, which was released by Centaur in 2021. His most recent recording is a double album on Centaur Records with violinist Joana Genova featuring the Four Sonatas for Violin and Piano by Stephen Dankner.
Delony has appeared as piano soloist, chamber musician, jazz performer, and guest pianist/arranger or conductor with orchestras throughout the United States as well as orchestras in Canada, the former Soviet Union and China. As a solo and collaborative recitalist, he has performed classical and jazz concerts throughout the U.S. as well as France, Germany, the former Soviet Union, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil and Argentina. He performs regularly with his own jazz trio, and has played with such jazz luminaries as Bobby Shew, Jimmy Heath, Carl Fontana and Branford Marsalis. He is also an active jazz composer/arranger whose scores have been performed by orchestras throughout the U.S. and Canada. He collaborates regularly with leading contemporary composers, having recorded and performed solo piano works by Paris-based American composer Joseph Makholm, as well as solo piano works by jazz composer Les Hooper. In January 2017, he premiered Greg Yasinitsky’s Jazz Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra. Due in part to the strength of this performance, the work was awarded The American Prize in composition.
Delony is the Boyd Professor of Piano and Jazz Studies in the School of Music at Louisiana State University, where he has been a member of the music faculty since 2000. He is a past recipient of an Artist Fellowship awarded by the Louisiana Division of the Arts, as well as the Edith Kirkpatrick Arts Leadership Award given by the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra. He received the LSU Distinguished Faculty Award in 2019 and was named the SEC Professor of the Year for LSU in 2020.