Silvio Scionti: Remembering a Master Pianist and Teacher (Visual Studies) - Hardcover

Guerry, Jack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0929398270 ISBN 13: 9780929398273

Publisher: University of North Texas Press, 1991

Synopsis

Silvio Scionti was a zestful, colorful figure, as well as a master pianist and teacher. Stories about him, particularly about his more than ten-year career at the University of NorthTexas, are legion, and author Jack Guerry—a former Scionti student—has collected many of them in this remembrance and biography.

Scionti firmly established his reputation as a compelling pianist, whose playing has been described as powerful, vital, and full of eloquence, during his twenty-six years at the American Conservatory in Chicago. Known especially throughout the United States and Europe for his duo-piano playing, Scionti’s career flourished when he married Texan Isabel Laughlin, and the “irreproachable and irrepressible Sciontis” impressed critics wherever they played.

Lured to North Texas in 1942, the Sciontis were instrumental in the growth of the School of Music to the stature it still claims today. Scionti’s “buoyant spirit,” enthusiasm, talent, and reputation brought students to Denton from around the country. Many members of Scionti’s “student family”—themselves now professionals and teachers—have contributed their recollections to this volume including tales of Scionti’s proverbial Italian spaghetti dinners, exhausting hikes up Mount Etna, and high-speed sight-seeing along Italian mountain lanes with Scionti at the wheel of his “magnificent red Buick.”

The “indefatigable” Scionti never stopped: When he was seventy and near the end of his North Texas career, he organized a ten-day tour of five states for his eight-piano emsemble—taking the eight pianos along and assembling them at each of the thirteen cities visited. Even through his “retirement” years, Scionti still was busy teaching and opening professional doors for students who continued to seek him out.

About this title

About the Author

Jack Guerry holds the rank of Alumni Professor of Music (Piano), one of the distinguished professorships at Louisiana State University. His B.M. and M.M. degrees in piano are from the University of North Texas where he was a scholarship student of Silvio Scionti as well as his assistant. He was granted the Ph.D. in music from Michigan State University

From Library Journal

Scionti (1882-1973) came to America from Italy in 1903 and soon enjoyed a multifaceted career that included teaching, solo and duo piano performances, conducting, writing, editing music, and even making player-piano rolls. It was his teaching, however, that set Scionti apart. He wove his seemingly magical teaching powers around a core of extremely gifted students. Built on a foundation of a love of people, a love of beautiful singing, especially Italian opera, and a unique gift of communication, Scionti's teaching was widely acclaimed. Guerry, a distinguished piano professor at Louisiana State University, is a former student and colleague of Scionti. Culling from numerous personal recollections he received from students and close associates of Scionti, Guerry offers a fond and laudatory remembrance. Pianists will find the book hard to put down. They may even find themselves envious of those fortunate enough to have known Scionti as their master teacher and friend.
- Kathleen Sparkman, Baylor Univ., Waco, Tex.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of North Texas Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0929398270
• ISBN 13: 9780929398273
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 220