From Japan to New Orleans: An Evening of International & Original Piano
Featuring
Cultural Diplomat Theodore Chaffman
Friday, June 27, 2025
6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
OPEN TO MEMBERS & GUESTS
This member event includes a fun dinner reception with a tapas buffet and open seating .
Before departing to represent the United States at World Expo 2025 in Japan, pianist Theodore Chaffman offers this recital as a gesture of cultural exchange. While his Expo performances will feature American repertoire—from classical and jazz to Hollywood and minimalism—this evening he brings Japanese composers to an American audience, weeks before bringing American composers to a Japanese one.
The first half features three modern Japanese voices: Joe Hisaishi’s lyrical One Summer’s Day, Toru Takemitsu’s poetic miniatures Breeze and Clouds, and Takashi Yoshimatsu’s dreamlike To a Disappeared Pleiad.
From there, the recital moves westward with Gottschalk’s Manchega—an exuberant concert etude by the New Orleans-born composer who wove Caribbean and Spanish idioms into American music. The program’s emotional center is Liszt’s Bénédiction de Dieu dans la Solitude, a vast, inwardly radiant work rarely heard live, followed by a final improvisation and a closing exhale in Debussy’s Clair de Lune.
Chaffman plays not to showcase repertoire or virtuosity, but to create space where cultures hear one another—and to reveal how beauty moves once borders fade. Join us in the Monroe House Theatre for an evening that is part concert, part conversation, and wholly present.
The Lineup:
Improvisation (Opening)
Joe Hisaishi – One Summer’s Day (from Spirited Away, 2001)
Toru Takemitsu – Pieces for Children (1952)
I. Breeze
II. Clouds
Takashi Yoshimatsu – Piano Folio: To a Disappeared Pleiad (1997)
Louis Moreau Gottschalk – Manchega, Étude de concert (1853)
Franz Liszt – Bénédiction de Dieu dans la Solitude (1847)
Improvisation (Interlude)
Claude Debussy – Clair de Lune (from Suite bergamasque, 1905)
About the Artist:
Theodore Chaffman is a concert pianist who works at the intersection of music, international dialogue, and public service. He studied international relations at American University, where he won the concerto competition with Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, before training at the Juilliard School in New York. His recitals trace music’s journeys across cultures.
In 2024, Chaffman was awarded a full scholarship to the Art of the Piano Festival in San Francisco, where he studied with renowned pianists including Garrick Ohlsson, Jon Nakamatsu, and Alexander Korsantia.
In 2025, he will serve as a U.S. State Department cultural performer at World Expo 2025 in Osaka, presenting a two-month recital series in the U.S. Pavilion. The program—shaped in conversation with Clive Gillinson, Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall—explores the cultural contributions of American piano music, with selections ranging from jazz and classical to Hollywood and Broadway.
This summer, he completed a cultural diplomacy fellowship at Meridian International Center and piloted a piano series at the World Bank, where he performed music across six continents. He is still searching for that rare composer-scientist stationed in Antarctica to complete the seventh.
More at theodorechaffman.com
The reception begins at 6:00 PM* and the performance at 7:00 PM.
A reservation is required by 8 PM the day before.
Dress: business casual
Call (202) 331-7282 or email dining@artsclubofwashington.org
*Please note that complimentary parking is now available for members after 5:30 PM at the garage located at 2001 Pennsylvania Ave (between Eye St. and K St. NW).
Price includes a $25 program fee, tax and gratuity.
