James Windell
Connor Austell grew up in South Haven – not far from the Scott Club where he will perform on March 16, 2025, at 3:00 pm.
Austell, a concert pianist who attended college at Grand Valey State University and the University of Michigan, is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of South Carolina Lancaster. He has fashioned a career by combining his talents as a pianist with his philosophy that decisions made in musical performance should be grounded in a historical, theoretical, and pedagogical understanding of the score.
“When I started college, I really took a liking to the academic aspects of music,” Austell said in a phone interview from his Lancaster, South Carolina home recently, explaining that the academic aspects of music which piqued his interest were music theory, musicology, and musical history. “I find that a good study of music entails a good understanding of music theory and music history as well.”
That’s why he brings both his roles – as pianist and historian – to his concerts. “I like to put the music in a context for people,” he said. “It helps to increase appreciation of the music with a little bit of understanding, particularly with this type of music. I like to engage with the audience in that way.”
The program Austell, who has a Ph.D. in Music Performance from the University of Georgia, has selected for his Scott Club concert includes the music of Mozart and Beethoven. “I’ve been interested lately with the music that straddles the Classical era of Haydn and Mozart and the Romantic era of Schumann and Chopin. It’s the period between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. There’s a lot of interesting music that was written in that era and is most evident in the early compositions of Beethoven.”
He added that the pieces he has chosen to play begin with Mozart and proceed to Beethoven. “This shows how Beethoven changed the aesthetics in art and changed some standards of musical form and context,” he said.
To round out the concert, Austell will include music from a subject of his research: Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins. “He was a pianist and composer who was actually born into slavery on a plantation in Georgia, not too far from where I was living for a time,” Austell said. “He was entirely blind and led a really fascinating life in that he was led around throughout the South and even Europe and Canada before he was restricted to staying south of the battle lines during the Civil War.”
Although blind, he taught himself to play the piano and to compose music. He had to dictate his compositions to his music teachers who would write them down. “My study focused on his musical compositions,” Austell said. “When I took him up, I found there was not much study of his musical works, so I put a few of those on my debut album.”
His initial album is Blind Tom’s Creative Vision and a recent article he wrote on the piano works of Thomas Wiggins will appear in an upcoming edition of American Musical Perspectives.
Connor Austell’s concert is presented at the Scott Club in collaboration with Foundry Hall and is supported in part by Holtec-Palisades, Michigan Arts and Culture Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Although the concert is free, reservations should be made by March 14 at info@scottclub.org. The Scott Club is located at 652 Phoenix Street, South Haven.
