Last night I had the joy of performing a recital at the Calgary Petroleum Club, sharing the stage with the wonderful pianist Susanne Ruberg-Gordon for an evening built around Bartók, Prokofiev, Szymanowski, and more.

This was a program I’d been looking forward to for a while — this repertoire doesn’t leave much room to hide. Bartók demands that folk-rooted rawness and rhythmic bite, Prokofiev swings between biting wit and real tenderness, and Szymanowski asks for a completely different kind of colour — lush, almost impressionistic, more about atmosphere than statement. Moving between all three in one evening is a workout for the ears as much as the hands, and getting to build that arc with a collaborator as attuned as Susanne made all the difference.

Susanne is one of those rare collaborative pianists who listens as much as she plays — a core member of the Juno-nominated Land’s End Ensemble and a longtime faculty member at the Mount Royal University Conservatory, she brought a sensitivity to every phrase that let the music breathe exactly where it needed to. There’s a particular kind of trust that develops between two musicians navigating Szymanowski’s shifting textures together, and by the time we reached the final piece, it felt like we’d been having a conversation all evening rather than performing at each other.

The room itself added something special to the night — the Petroleum Club has an elegance that suits this kind of intimate recital format, close enough that the audience felt like part of the conversation rather than spectators to it.

This one also carried a little extra meaning for me, performing while pregnant. There’s something quietly powerful about bringing a program this demanding to the stage at this particular stage of life — a reminder of how much music and motherhood can hold at once.

Thank you to everyone who came out on a Thursday evening to spend it with Bartók, Prokofiev, and Szymanowski — and to Susanne, for being a fantastic musical partner in this program.