On Thursday, December 17, A Little Lunch Music will present pianist Lawrence Quinnett for a free concert. Dr. Quinnett will perform a program of music by composer Alexander Scriabin. The performance is being co-sponsored by Nick & Carolyn Davis and Bob Ekelund & Mark Thornton. The café menu is available online.
Lawrence Quinnett is an active concert pianist who has played solo and chamber music in the US and abroad. He has appeared as concerto soloist with the National Repertory Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Carl Topilow, the Florida State University Symphony Orchestra with Maestro Alex Jimenez, the Samuel Barber Festival Orchestra, and the Methodist University Orchestra. He has given concerts and masterclasses in St. Kitts; London and elsewhere in the UK; and colleges and universities in Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Having grown up in North Carolina, Quinnett has returned to judge competitions and to give masterclasses as part of the 2011 and 2012 Fayetteville Piano Festival and 2012 Chopin Festival. He has been a featured performer at the Music at Mains Series at the Jacksonville Public Library, the 2015 Montserrat Music Festival, and the Central Florida Music Teachers’ Association.
Quinnett’s competition successes include first prize in the 2013 Doctoral Concerto Competition at Florida State University, the 2011 FSU Chapman Competition, the 2008 South Carolina Music Teachers’ Association Young Artist Piano Competition, and the 2006 Southeastern College Piano Competition. While a student at Methodist University, he received the Willis C. Gates Music Award for Excellence two years in a row.
Considering himself an inquisitive musician, Quinnett’s interests include chamber music, harpsichord, new music, and music theory. In October 2013 he was one of the three featured pianists in Charleston’s Colour of Music Festival which celebrates composers of African descent. Quinnett was a performer in the 2012 New Music Festival and John Cage Festival at FSU and both performer and lecturer at the 2013 Ligeti Symposium and Festival. The topic of his doctoral treatise is harmony in the first book of Ligeti Etudes. Quinnett maintains a private studio, attends to the duties of a church music ministry, and teaches as professor at Wallace Community College in Dothan, Alabama, and Fayetteville Technical Community College in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Quinnett’s formative teachers have included Carolyn Cloud-Absher, Jane Gardiner, Dr. Jon Maisonpierre, and Dr. Douglas Weeks. He has been privileged to be selected for masterclasses and coaching sessions with Jeremy Denk, Karen Shaw, Anton Kuerti, Simone Dinnerstein, Elizabeth Pridinoff, Miles Hoffman, the Cavani String Quartet, Frederick Moyer, and Shai Wosner, among others. He holds the Doctor of Music degree from Florida State University, where he studied with Dr. Read Gainsford.
