L

Piano Unlimited

Peter Nero, America's ultimate crossover performer,
leads the DSO in a celebration of Gershwin.

tigious Tchaikovsky piano competi-
tion. At the same time, with the
blessings of his piano teachers,
Constance Keene and Abraham
Chasens at New York's Juilliard
School of Music, he branched out
into jazz, then pops.
"They told me, 'You can do what
we can't do,"' Nero remembers.
At the time, his name was
Bernard Nierow, and he performed
as Bernie. "It was actually pro-
nounced 'Nero' all the time," he
says.
But "Bernie Nierow" was hard to
spell and harder to say; the first syl-
lable of his last name was usually
inaudible when pronounced right
after the last syllable of his first
name.
So it was as Peter Nero that he
won a Grammy Award for Best New
Artist in 1961, on the strength of
his first album, Piano Forte. Another
Grammy, for The Colorful Peter
Nero, followed in 1962.
"When they asked me to change,
I must have given them 20 names
starting with 13,' so I could retain
my identity," Nero says.
But it was not to be.
"I've been legally 'Peter Nero'
since 1963," he says. 'But, if some-
body says, 'Bernie,' I still turn
around."

DIANA LIEBERMAN

Special to the Jewish News

I

t was midwinter 1961, and
pianist Peter Nero, his drum-
mer and bass player piled
into a station wagon in Chicago.
They drove all night through a
blinding snowstorm, heading for
Baker's Keyboard Lounge and
their first Detroit-area gig.
Fast-forward 44 years. On this
trip to the Motor City, the
Brooklyn-born pianist-conductor
will fly into Metro Airport from
West Palm Beach, Fla. (hopefully,
there won't be a snowstorm).
Instead of jazz for three weeks in
a smoke-filled club, Nero will
perform with the Detroit
Symphony Orchestra in a pro-
gram featuring works by compos-
er George Gershwin, with five
concerts scheduled Feb. 10-13.
The program begins with
Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue and
An American in Paris, with Nero
at the piano. He'll take the podi-
um for selections from the corn-
poser's one opera, Porgy and Bess,
featuring soprano Alyson
Cambridge and baritone Leonard
Rowe.
Next, the duo will sing familiar
love songs by Gershwin and other
Broadway composers. While the
orchestra will back the soloists in
some of these songs, in others,
they'll be accompanied by the
Peter Nero Trio.

At The Piano

Winding Trail

Nero, 70, has spent his entire
career ferrying between classics,
jazz and pops.
A child prodigy who trained as
a classical pianist, he went on to
become a semifinalist in the pres-

Peter Nero: Tye been legally 'Peter Nero' since
1963, but, if somebody says, 'Bernie,' I still turn
around," says the former Bernard Nierow.

Born in 1934 in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
Nero started his formal music train-
ing at age 7. Although neither par-
ent was a musician, both were
extremely supportive.
His father, who came to the
United States from the Ukraine as a
child, was a New York City school
administrator who went on to head
a Jewish orphanage. He later

PIANO

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