CONCERT PUTS 5 GRAND PIANOS
ON STAGE

BY WES BLOMSTER CAMERA MUSIC CRITIC
© Daily Camera -  Boulder, Colorado
Sunday, June 14, 1998

Section: LIVING & ARTS
Page: 5F

"Piano quintet" is a concept of frustrating ambiguity.

For most, it`s a composition for piano and four other instruments - usually strings. Brahms comes to mind.

But for Sharon Cundiff it`s five pianists who sit down at individual instruments to form a keyboard orchestra. The uninitiated
may experience it in action Tuesday when Cundiff, a pioneer among Boulder piano teachers, brings 14 such teams to Unity
Stage Theater in the first-ever piano quintet concert in Colorado.

"And it`s only the fourth in the United States!" says Cundiff, who took a team of her own students to the Gina Bachauer
Competition in Salt Lake City two years ago.

"I fell in love with the idea," Cundiff continues. "And I coached a group of my students for six months before taking them to the
Bachauer. It was the first time that piano quintets had been included in a program of this scope."

Credit for the quintet concept, Cundiff says, goes to Jane Tan, a nationally recognized piano instructor who will be in Boulder
for Tuesday`s performance.

"Tan began arranging music for her own students," explains Cundiff, active on the Boulder musical scene since 1973. "The idea
caught on, and she now has her own company to publish these works."

The popularity of the concept now finds composers writing original works for keyboard quintets. Although performances by
multiple pianos are not uncommon, it`s the fact that each member of the piano quintet plays a different - and specific - role that
makes the concept unique.

"It`s a small orchestra of five equal and individual voices," Cundiff says. "And it makes playing the piano a social activity; it
takes the loneliness out of learning the instrument."

Teachers coach such an ensemble only to a certain point and then back off.

"It`s very exciting to watch a team develop," says Cundiff. "Members of the group lead each other and communicate through
eye contact and body movements; they learn where to look for cues and whom to watch. And they don`t even know that
they`re doing it."

Fourteen groups of five will be on stage at Tuesday`s concert; some of the participants will perform in more than one team.

"About a third of the pianists are adults," Cundiff says. "The others are high school or college-age kids."

Music on the program reaches from such old favorites as the "Blue Danube" to several of Bach`s "greatest hits" and carols and
folk songs.

Cundiff reaches a crescendo in her praise of Jerry Swalley, the Boulder piano representative who is providing logisitic support
for "Five on Five."

"We`re rehearsing in his warehouse," she says. "And he is bringing in five matched Baldwin grands for the performance."

Cundiff sums up the quintet concept as "a fun way to make music," stressing the artistic acumen of those involved.

"They can reach quite a decible level," she laughs. "Yet it`s never noise - it`s always music that they produce!"