Oakland pianist Audrey Vardanega will be in Berkeley to play at a gala 40th anniversary celebration Saturday to honor the Crowden School, where her career began.I remember the first time I heard Oakland pianist Audrey Vardanega play. It was 2006, and she was debuting with the prestigious Midsummer Mozart Festival in Berkeley playing Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467.
Audrey will come home for a different reason this weekend, though. She’ll be here on Saturday to play at a gala 40th anniversary celebration to honor the place where it all began for her, the Crowden School in Berkeley, which she remembers as a place that was “just filled with love” and helped her overcome her childhood shyness. She and violinist Ariana Kim will play “Primavera Porteña,” a tango from Astor Piazzolla’s “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.
• Jeremy Cohen, a founding violinist of Quartet San Francisco, who studied with Anne Crowden before the school was founded;