Steinway Hall opens up its heart to Café de Concert

Aksel had a wonderful meeting with Vivian Chiu, Peter Goodrich and the amazingly funny piano tuner from Portugal. Now Café de Concert is planning future concerts in the lobby of the Steinway Hall.










Kolstad was so fortunate to be able to rehears in the wonderful basement where all of history´s greatest pianists have been rehearsing - and still are.
On the grand piano next to the one Aksel was practicing on, he found a reservation for a familiar name in Norway - so Aksel wrote a short message on his business-card for him.

Great meeting with Caffe Vivaldi

Our New York producer, Leat Sabbah, and I had a great meeting today with Ishrat - the owner of the famous Caffe Vivaldi down town. Cafe de Concert will use Caffe Vivaldi as its main base in New York with concerts twice a week starting January 2010.

The CdC logo will be put up on the windows and the concept will blossom with great performers at the café and also new projects outside the café which will be lead by our three producers in NY, Leat Sabbah, Yemi Gonzales and Gabrielle Fink

Impressions of Norway

Innovation Norway has started a new and wonderful trend in New York by presenting different impressions of Norway through design, architecture, gastromoni and music - this time at the residence of Norway's Consul General Sissel Breie at Park Avenue and 55th street in Manhattan.

Aksel Kolstad and Café de Concert were so fortunate to represent classical music as one of the impressions of Norway that was presented in the US yesterday. Aksel Kolstad also hosted the whole event and presented Moods of Norway, Snøhetta, the wonderful Norwegian chef Gunnar Hvarnes and of course also Café de Concert - all presented in hard core and entertaining Café de Concert-style.



Kolstad performed the Grieg piano-trio with two of CdC´s newest producers in NY, Gabrielle Fink (violin) and Leat Sabbah (cello) after performing one of his own solo pieces for piano. At the end of the event Filip Pogadi (violin) and Colin Brooks (viola) joined forces with Gabrielle and Leat and gave an outstanding performance of Grieg´s 1st movement from his string quartet in g minor.






Kolstad's opening words of the event:

"Norway is a young nation. Before the second world war most Norwegians were more or less peasants and fishermen...but then we found oil. The rest is history. Some call it a petroleum farytale. I call it pure luck. We were lucky enough to have smart men and women invest and develop our new treasure. But our greatest treasure of all, is our culture. So now we invest our petroleum money in culture and tradition."




Pictures by Berit Hessen.