Gayle Blankenburg has performed extensively to great critical acclaim as a solo pianist and chamber musician. Among nearly a dozen award-winning CDs recorded for Southwest Chamber Music on Cambria Records are her performances of Elliot Carter's song cycle Of Challenge and of Love (with soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson) and the Carlos Chavez Invencion for solo piano. Her recording of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with the LA-based ensemble “inauthentica” has received the highest critical acclaim from Gramophone Magazine, Opera News, and The American Record Guide. Recently released on Bridge Records is a double-CD set of the flute/piano repertoire by Karl Kohn.
She has performed in venues such as the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, at Cooper Union, the Tenri Institute, the DiMenna Center and the National Opera Center in New York City, the Schoenberg Institute in Vienna, Austria, the Hongtai Concert Hall in Xiamen, China, the ASEAN Festival in Nanning, China, REDCAT and Zipper Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the Canterbury Performing Arts Center in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The Los Angeles Times has reviewed her playing on many occasions, saying, “Blankenburg played with elegant power and poise… Her crisp touch and light pedaling produced crystalline, pensive, haunting sequences... This is a gratefully idiomatic piece for a pianist with both power and a palette, requirements Blankenburg met easily.
