André Watts, Pioneering Piano Virtuoso, Dies at 77 |
André Watts, Pioneering Piano Virtuoso, Dies at 77
The New York Times
2023-07-14
Neal Boenzi/The New York Times
One of the first Black superstars in classical music, he awed audiences with his charisma and his technical powers.
André Watts, a pianist whose mighty technique and magnetic charm awed audiences and made him one of the first Black superstars in classical music, died on Wednesday at his home in Bloomington, Ind. He was 77.
The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Joan Brand Watts.
Mr. Watts was an old-world virtuoso — his idol was the composer and showman Franz Liszt — with a knack for electricity and emotion. He sometimes hummed, stomped his feet and bobbed his head while he played, and some critics faulted him for excess. But his charisma and his technical powers were unquestioned, which helped fuel his rise to the world’s top concert halls.
“My greatest satisfaction is performing,” Mr. Watts told The New York Times in 1971, when he was 25. “The ego is a big part of it, but far from all. Performing is my way of being part of humanity — of sharing.”
“There’s something beautiful,” he added, “about having an entire audience hanging on a single note.”.
Mr. Watts, whose father was Black and whose mother was white, was a rarity in a field where musicians of color have long been underrepresented. While he preferred not to speak about race, he was celebrated as a pioneer who defied stereotypes about classical music and helped open doors for aspiring artists of color…
Read the entire obituary here.
Tags: André Watts, Javier C. Hernández, Joan Brand Watts, music, New York Times, The New York Times