Congratulations to Marialy Pacheco for winning the prestigious Montreaux Jazz Solo Piano competition.
Virtuoso pianist and composer Marialy Pacheco has won the 14th edition of the solo piano competition at the 2012 Parmigiani Montreux Jazz Festival.
33 young talents from 22 different countries submitted their applications and 11 participated in the semi finals on July 8th and 9th.
On July 10th the jury presided over by Polish pianist and composer Leszek Mozdzer and composed of Mr Jean-Claude Reber (Director of the Conservatory Montreux-Vevey-Riviera) Mr Francois Carrard (lawyer and Chairman of the Montreux Jazz Festival Foundation) and Mr Andre Manoukian (songwriter and pianist) awarded 1st Place to Cuban born, Brisbane resident Marialy Pacheco.
Marialy receives CHF 10’000.– Swiss francs, a certificate and a week’s recording time at Balik Farm Studio, located in the breathtaking scenery of Switzerland’s Toggenburg region.
We believe she will be touring the country in 2013, so look out for her. She has a CD available from Pinnacles Records. Extract from a review by John McBeath below
This third solo piano album from Cuban-born Brisbane based Marialy Pacheco features several standards, a couple of her own compositions and several Cuban pieces. The music flows pleasantly with feeling in slower numbers such as her ballad original Bremen and surges with Latin exuberance using fast-running passages against a chordal Cuban left hand in another original dedicated to her adopted home, The Sunshine State. Two Jerome Kern standards are included: a romantic interpretation of The Way you Look Tonight with quick melodic improvisations, and The Song Is You taken at a faster clip with a constantly moving interchange between bass and fast moving treble. The three Cuban pieces might have come straight from a solo piano at a resplendent dining room classic of 1940's Havana, most notably in Mambo Inn with its characteristic rhythms and hyper-fast runs breaking out to sweep across the keyboard.… Read the full review on the Weekend
