National touring piano project comes to Dover-Foxcroft

Boston-based concert pianist Miki Sawada will tour across Maine with a piano in tow as part of the Gather Hear Tour. Sawada will perform 10 free events in locations that do not normally feature classical music, such as a rural community theater and an urban youth detention center. The concert in Dover-Foxcroft will be at the Center Theatre at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 29. 

Through the Gather Hear Tour, Sawada is on a mission to perform in all 50 states, inspiring human connection across political and socio economic divides. The project was launched in 2017 in Alaska, and has since toured West Virginia, Massachusetts, Utah, Louisiana, and Alabama, reaching thousands over 85 events. The idea of Gather Hear came to Sawada a week after the 2016 presidential election, when she despaired over the reality of a divided America that was bared, and looked for ways to use classical music as a positive force. By taking classical music outside of concert halls and into community gathering spaces both urban and rural, presenting it in an approachable and personal manner, Sawada aims to break down typical barriers of entry to classical music and create occasions for us to feel connected and human. 

In Gather Hear Maine, Sawada will tour with a program titled “Maine the ‘Beautiful.’” She will perform music inspired by the woods and the ocean – an homage to the Maine landscape – as well as music that offers commentary on America’s past and present. A centerpiece is Huang Ruo’s “Meditation on ‘America The Beautiful.’” Additional works are by Amy Beach, Frederic Chopin, Alexander Scriabin, Jean Sibelius, William Grant Still, and Maine-based composer Conrad Winslow.

Sawada says of Gather Hear Maine, “Having explored this country through classical music for two presidential cycles since the project’s founding, fall 2024 feels like a significant marker. It will be another high-stakes, emotionally turbulent election season, and I hope my concerts will be a much-needed opportunity for reflection and coming together around music. I can’t think of any place I’d rather be performing than in Maine, which is a place I know and love, but I will really get to know its residents on a whole new dimension through Gather Hear.”

Gather Hear Maine is made possible by multiple regional partners, most prominently Portland Ovations in Portland, where Gather Hear spends three days in residence. Other partners include Aroostook Mental Health Clinic, Center Theatre, and Bates College.

Sawada is a international concert pianist based in Boston, who has performed in North America, Europe, and Asia at venues and occasions such as Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Roulette Brooklyn, Helsinki Music Centre, The Arctic Philharmonic (Norway), Oneppo Chamber Music Series at Yale, Toronto Summer Music Festival, Music on Main (Vancouver), and the Banff Centre. In the summers, she serves as a faculty member of the Heifetz Institute. Sawada holds degrees in piano from Yale School of Music, Eastman School of Music, and Northwestern University.

For more, go to https://www.gatherhear.com/.