In August of 2006, pianist Luke Massery was given the honor of performing the first recital in the Colonial Theater in his home town of Pittsfield Massachusetts after its 25 Million Dollar restoration. One of the top acoustical houses in the world, the Colonial once saw the original Sousa Band and Rachmaninoff, but had been dormant as a performance venue for 70 years until Luke's exhilarating performance in front of a capacity crowd of 800 people. This past July Luke performed a program of mostly Gershwin at the Rochester Convention Center as a prelude to the Rochester Philharmonic's Rhapsody in Rochester gala, which celebrated the success of their recently released Gershwin CD. Mr. Massery performed a live, half-hour broadcast on NPR that was heard across the northeast. He was invited to perform a prelude concert at the Boston Symphony Café just prior to Seiji Ozawa's final concert as conductor of the Boston Symphony. Luke has performed two movements of the Gubaidulina piano quintet with members of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and is a regular performer in the Stockbridge Chamber Concerts Series in Massachusetts.
Luke was the second recipient of the Daniel Pearl Scholarship for musicians or journalists founded by the wife of the NYC Journalist who was killed in Afghanistan. He has studied at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, and privately with Jonathan Bass, Elizabeth Hagenah, and Edna Golandsky. Luke recently graduated from the prestigious Eastman School of Music where he studied under Dr. Douglas Humpherys, chairman of the piano department.
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