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The Danish recorder player, Michala Petri, began playing the recorder at the age of 3. She first played on Danish Radio at the age of 5, and her debut performance as a soloist was at Copenhagen's Tivoli concert hall in 1969 when she was 11. She studied with Professor Ferdinand Conrad at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover, partly because she was still too young to become a full-time student in Denmark.
At the time of her studies the recorder was mainly considered only an instrument for Baroque music, but already then many of today's composers were composing works for her. However, being a daughter of a violinist and a pianist, both with interest in contemporary music, Michala Petri already as a child became interested in expanding the possibilities of her own instrument, to make it match the sounds she grew up hearing. Today, her repertoire spans works from the Baroque, Classicism, Romanticism and extends into contemporary and improvised music. She is noted for her virtuosity and versatility across a wide range of styles, from the Baroque repertoire of the height of the instrument's popularity to contemporary works written particularly for her. It is precisely this versatility that lies behind her special appeal as an artist.
Michala Petri gave a debut recital for BBC radio in March 1976, and the BBC released a recorded recital in 1977. Leo Black's sleeve note for this recording remarks, "one realises what can happen when a mighty talent starts young enough." Since then, she has performed more than 4000 concerts in the worlds leading festivals and Concert Halls, and has broken down the boundaries of her instrument, the recorder. Since her youth, she has followed her wish for musical expansion in various ways, through commissioning more than 150 new works, through dialogue with other musical cultures and through developing new playing techniques.
Michala Petri frequently collaborates with her former husband (they divorced in 2010, guitarist and lutenist Lars Hannibal, with whom she has made several recordings. Other artists with whom she has collaborated include Keith Jarrett, Sir Neville Marriner, James Galway, Gidon Kremer, Heinz Holliger, Henryk Szeryng, Pinchas Zukerman, Maurice Andre, Joshua Bell, Mahan Esfahani and Claudio Abbado. She has taken a particular interest in the combination of recorder and guitar, collaborating with guitarists including Göran Söllscher, Kazuhito Yamashita and Manuel Barrueco. She she has also recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the English Chamber Orchestra, among many others.
The first work dedicated to her was from Danish Fluxus artist Henning Christiansen: "To play for a child". Through the demands she met from new compositions, she further developed various playing techniques, enabling the recorder to have a more varied tone-quality and a larger expression. In spite of advice to take on a "real" instrument she stayed with the recorder - realizing the instruments ability to immediately express the players intentions, being the wind instrument reacting most instantly to the breath of the player. Furthermore she saw a challenge in advocating that good music making is independent of advanced remedies, and in "demystifying" classical concerts, realizing that many people unfamiliar with classical and modern music would be attending her concerts, being familiar with the instrument. Since youth she has made a point of programming contemporary music in her concerts challenging the audience, and advocating that modern music is as accessible as old, if put i the right frame and if performed in an atmosphere of bonding with the audience.
Michala Petri has premiered dozens of works, by composers Malcolm Arnold, Gordon Jacob and Richard Harvey, as well as Joan Albert Amargos, Niels Viggo Bentzon, Gunnar Berg, Michael Berkeley, Erling Bjerno, Jens Bjerre, Daniel Børtz, Bright Cheng, Asger Lund Christiansen, Henning Christiansen, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Egil Harder, Piers Hellawell, Vagn Holmboe, Erik Haumann, Axel Borup Jørgensen, Ander and Thomas Koppel, Gary Kulesha, Hans Kunstovny, Ezra Laderman, Butch Lacy, Miklos Maros, Per Nørgaard, Sunleif Rasmussen, Bent Sørensen, Steven Stucky, Olav Anton Thommessen, Chen Yi.
In her wish to extending the instruments limited dynamic potential, Michala Petri has actively collaborated with instrument-makers, and applied her experience to the development of a new type that incorporates her ideas. "With this instrument, which has more dynamics and compass, I can give better expression to the music, with more freedom and naturalness in my expressive range".
From the beginning of her career Michala Petri has performed with musicians outside the Baroque music scene, such as Palle Mikkelborg, Keith Jarrett, Carsten Dahl, Jesper Thilo, Niels Jørgen Steen, Benjamin Koppel and Bjørn Svin. Her collaboration in the 1990's on two CD's with Keith Jarrett, gave her a latent interest in the art of improvisation, which is partly required in Baroque music, though within the narrow borders of the rules of that time. The collaboration was initiated by Keith Jarrett, who heard Michala play in concert at New Yorks Lincoln Centre and suggested that they at some point played something together - which let to two albums of J.S. Bach's Sonatas and George Frideric Handel's Sonatas. Recently she has taken up playing fully improvised concerts, amongst others with Benjamin Koppel and Carsten Dahl.
Michala Petri has received the Leonie Sonning Music Prize, Europa Musicale Soloist Prize, three times the German ECHO KLASSIK Award, amongst others. She has recorded more than 70 CD's, several having been Grammy-nominated. A concert at BBC London when she was 17 let to her first Album for Philips/Polygram in London with Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, followed by an exclusive contract with the company (1979-1987), until years later she signed an equally long term contract with the international RCA/BMG (New York). In 2007 she formed with her yearlong music partner and former husband Lars Hannibal her own recording company, in order to do more contemporary and experimental albums. Their first release, "Movements" with three contemporary concertos received a US Grammy nomination in the cathegory "Best contemporary Composition" for the work Northern Concerto for recorder and large orchestra by Spanish jazz/classical composer Joan Albert Amargos. A series with contemporary concertos for recorder and orchestra has been started; the releases so far are Chinese Recorder Concertos (Grammy nominated), English Recorder Concertos, Danish/Faroese Recorder concertos and with German/French Recorder Concertos,- released May 2016. American Recorder Concertos, Pacific Recorder Concertos and South American Recorder Concertos to follow. Since 2014 she played in a Duo with Harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani,- and they relesed so far on OUR Recordings "La Follia" with Music by Corelli (ICMA Award 2016 as "Best Baroque Instrumental" and UK-DK with Modern Music from England and Denmark.
Other ways of expanding her musical horizon and borders of her instrument has been to search dialogue with other genres and cultures. With composer/trumpetplayer Palle Mikkelborg the "cross-over" she has made the World music album "Going to Pieces - without falling Apart" for recorder, harp and strings. The album "Dialogue - East meets " is an album investigating the meeting of two cultures - Western and Chinese - in a form as simple as possible: Five Chinese and five Danish composers were each asked to write a duet for recorder and the Chinese "xiao/dizi" - performed by leading xiao player Chen Yue. The two cultures are opposite and therefore complementing each other - and at the same time they meet at a the musical level where all are united. The combination recorder/choir caught Michala's enthusiasm after premiering a piece in 2008 by Daniel Børtz with the Swedish Chamber Choir. Soon other works followed by Sunleif Rasmussen and Peter Bruun, swell as the already classic piece The Nightingale by Latvian Uģis Prauliņš. The works are recorded on the CD "The Nightingale", which was Grammy nominated twice and received an ECHO KLASSIK Award.
Michala Petri has received numerous prizes: Jacob Gade Prize 1969 and 1975; Musikanmelderringens Kunstnerpris 1976; Nordring Radio Prize 1977; Gramex Prize 1979; Tagea Brandts rejselegat 1981 Niels-Prisen 1982; Maarum Mineralvandsprisen 1982; Louis Halberstadts Æreslegat 1991; Værkets Kulturpris 1992; Rødekro Kommunes Kulturpris 1994; Æreshåndværker i Haandværkerforeningen i Kjøbenhavn 1996; Nominated to Nordisk Råds Musikpris 1996 and 2015; Volmer Sørensens Mindelegat 1997; H.C.Lumbye Prisen 1998; Wilhelm Hansen Prisen 1998; Léonie Sonnings Musikpris 2000; European Soloist Prize: Pro Europa 2005; Knight of the Dannebrog, 1.Rank in 2011. Album Prizes: Echo Klassik (Deutsche Schallplattenpreis) 1997, 2002, 2012 and 2015. Danish Music Award (P2-Prisen) 2006 and DMA nomination 2013 . Nomination for US-Grammy: 2008, 2011, 2012 and FMA (Faroese Music Award) 2016.
Since September 2012 Michala Petri serves as Honorary Professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Music,- and since 2014 as vice- president at Recorder Society UK.
Michala Petri is the step-granddaughter of Danish actress Ingeborg Brams. Her mother is Hanne Petri, who studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, and her brother, David Petri, won the Danish "Young Musician of the Year Award" in 1978. He is a cellist. Both have recorded with Michala as The Petri Trio (or Michala Trio). In a 1990 interview with Petri, the award-winning radio music broadcaster from Chicago Bruce Duffie presented her as a Recorder Virtuoso. |
