12-23-14 – Audio Interview

Eleonora Lvov began life under the grand piano in her parent’s one room apartment in the then Soviet Union. With two virtuoso pianists for parents little Eleonora spent her days surrounded by the glorious piano music her parents played. Soon she was being helped on to the piano stool, her fingers placed and her training begun. Is it any wonder therefore that today she too is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso pianist, concertizing widely in the US, Europe and Russia – and a master-teacher on the University level, as well as to all ages in her own studio in Sarasota. Listen to this exuberant woman talk about her relationship to the music she plays and her dedication to transforming her audience. Hear her play an excerpt from George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in a cut from one of her numerous CD’s. And come hear her in person at her annual concerts for the Unitarian Universalist Churches:

• Sunday 1/4/15 at 4:00 PM at
  322 15th St W
  Bradenton FL 34205
  (no charge)
• Sunday 1/18/15 at 4:00 at
  3975 Fruitville Rd
  Sarasota FL 34232
  ($15.00)

For more information you can call her at 941-359-0235 or go to her website www.eleonoralvov.com

11-26-13 – Audio Interview

When he was eight years old Rob Ruggiero would make up stories, corral his cousins, costume and rehearse them and put on performances for his large Italian family. He instinctively knew who he was and what he wanted to do with his life – but like so many of us, he forgot. Luckily in his high school senior year Rob, already a disco dancer, was asked to dance in a production of Oklahoma and he says that it was there that he “found his place, his people, his family.” Still, while he knew that the theater was his path, he didn’t discover his role in it until he took his first directing class in his senior year in college and remembered his eight year passion for creating theater by directing. In addition to a prodigious free lancing career as one of the few directors to earn national recognition for his work in both straight plays and musicals, Rob is the producing artistic director of TheaterWorks in Hartford CT. The only director to have received four Kevin Kline Awards (2 for Best Direction of a Musical (Urinetown and Ella) and two for Best Direction of a play (Take Me Out and The Little Dog Laughed), he is in Sarasota FL to direct his version of Show Boat, which he created for the Goodspeed Opera House, and which garnered him his fifth Connecticut Critics Circle award, to open the 2014 season at the Asolo Repertory Theatre. Listen to this charming, ebullient, delightful man discover his deeper connection to Show Boat and talk about his circuitous path tp the place he calls home.