Piano in Flower

PIANO IN FLOWER

with

pianist & poet

Lara Kirsten

Lara had a lot of fun selecting the pieces for this blooming program! She debuted this program on the lawns of the Fernkloof Botanical Gardens in Hermanus in 2025. This year she is bringing Piano in Flower on tour to the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. One of her stops will be The Playhouse at the Mushroom Farm to play for one of her favourite crowds – the warmsouled folk of The Midlands.

Pieces inspired by flowers, gardens, butterflies, birds, rain and trees!

A playful, colourful and evocative selection of music by Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, De Falla, Boulanger, Delibes, Daquin, Joplin, Rani and Einaudi

…and of course a few poems inspired by the flowery theme!

COMPLETE PROGRAMME

Improvisation

Léo Delibes – Flower duet (from the opera Lakmé)

Edvard Grieg – Schmetterling (The Butterfly)

Herman Beeftink – Waterlilies

Louis-Claude Daquin – Le coucou (The cuckoo)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Song of the Lark

Edvard Grieg – An den Frühling (To Spring)

Lili Boulanger – Dun jardin clair (Of a bright garden)

Hania Rani – Eden

Scott Joplin – Maple Leaf Rag

Ludovico Einaudi – Golden Butterflies

Claude Debussy – Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the rain)

Manuel de Falla – Danza española no. 1 from La vida breve (The brief life)

Artist Bio

Lara Kirsten is a pianist, piano teacher performance poet. After completing her high school career at the National School of the Arts in Johannesburg in 1997, Lara received her BMus and BMus Honours degrees, both cum laude at the University of Pretoria. Joseph Stanford and Wessel van Wyk were her mentors in solo piano and chamber music respectively. In 1999 she was awarded a SAMRO bursary for undergraduate students. In 2002 she received her chamber music licentiate from UNISA. She was appointed junior lecturer at the University of Pretoria where she taught piano from 2003 to 2005.

For the past eighteen years Lara has been active as both a solo and chamber musician performing with musicians such as coloratura soprano Linda van Coppenhagen, soprano Gwyneth Lloyd, tenor Sandile Mabaso, clarinettist Morné van Heerden, cellists Wessel Beukes and Francois le Roux, flautists Thomas de Bruin and Kaolin Thomson, pianist Laura Pauna and conductor Richard Cock and his Chanticleer Singers. She often performs her poetry within her music recitals. She has performed in venues such as the Sandton Theatre on the Square, the Baxter concert hall in Cape Town, the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, the Guy Butler Theatre in Grahamstown, the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg and Northwards House in Johannesburg.

Lara has performed at the Wakkerstroom Music Festival, the McGregor Poetry Festival, the AfrikaBurn Festival in the Tankwa Karoo, the opening ceremony for the International Aquarium Congress hosted at the CTICC, the Woordfees in Stellenbosch, the Hilton Arts Festival, the Michaelhouse Music Festival in KwaZulu-Natal, the Voorkamer Fest in Darling and the Fynarts festival in Hermanus.

In November 2019 Lara settled in Sandbaai in the Overstrand region of the Western Cape - her base from where she currently works, rehearses and teaches.

Lara’s poetry, videos, photos and creative projects can be viewed on her blog at https://laraafrika.blogspot.com/