Hershey Felder: The Piano and Me

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Famous pianist Hershey Felder has toured the world with his many shows about legendary composers from Chopin and Tchaikovsky to Gershwin and Irving Berlin giving over 6,000 performances. Now he has chosen to tell his own story from his upbringing in Montreal to the present and proves himself to be a consummate storyteller both on the piano and in words, incorporating the most famous piano show pieces of the last 250 years. Called The Piano and Me, the show is riveting for both classical music aficionados as well as those unversed in anything other than pop music of today. Playing 16 people who were instrumental in his career, he brings them all to life for us.

Growing up in Montreal to immigrant parents, Felder was a fat unpopular child who smelled of cabbage. He discovers the piano round the age of six, just around the time his beautiful mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and his father became taciturn. Weekly piano lessons with the strict Evelyn required him to learn a new piece every week. His Hungarian grandparents brought scores from great Hungarian composers but were most enthralled when he played Bartók for them which took them back to the old country. He also reached his silent Polish grandparents playing Chopin’s “Military Polonaise” which means so much to them.

When he was accepted by the head of the Juilliard School’s piano department but could not afford to rent a place in New York, he made the weekly trip from Montreal to Manhattan in a cheap car his father had bought him, getting up at the crack of dawn and driving home after each lesson for three years. At age 16, he is accepted into McGill University’s Conservatory of Music.

Throughout his recounting of his career, Felder goes to the piano and plays for us except of what he is assigned and studying: Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier,” Liszt’s “Liebesträume,” Rachmaninoff’s “Prelude in G Minor,” Mozart’s “Rondo Alla Turca,” Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” and John Williams’ Flying Theme” from Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” Each piece becomes more impassioned than the last suggesting his gaining authority at the piano as he learned his craft. Not so surprisingly these are also the world’s most famous solo piano pieces.

When his initial education is completed, he applies for a job with Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation for the 50^th anniversary of Auschwitz. He finds himself in Los Angeles for training where he discovers that he is related to film director Joel Zwick who tells him to let him know when he has a concert booked. His job interviewing Mengele’s victims in Auschwitz leads back to “Rhapsody in Blue” when he is told that one can hear the sound of trains in the music. When he relates this story back home in the States, the Gershwin heirs object to this connection to the music but when Felder suggests an evening devoted to playing Gershwin’s music and telling his life story, they relent. Zwick then helps him get his George Gershwin Alone one-man show launched. And hence his career was born almost 30 years ago recreating the lives and scores of the great composers.

Aside from the grand piano center stage, Felder is surrounded by piles of old suitcases in his own scenic design. This not only refers to his 30 years on the road with his many biographical composer shows, but also the time when he found a suitcase with Jewish religious objects in the front closet of his Hungarian grandparents’ Montreal home. “We must always be ready if they come for us,” they tell him, having never gotten over their wartime Holocaust experience.  Pointing to a suitcase almost at the footlight, Felder tells us this is that exact suitcase. The screen on the back wall of the set is devoted to Stefano Decarli’s video design showing all of the family members and composers that Felder describes. Magically some of the pictures are made to move, turning them into home movies rather than just still pictures.

In recent years, Hershey Felder has done a great deal to popularize the music and lives of both classical and Broadway composers. Now he has turned the spotlight on his own remarkable life and career. The Piano and Me is a thrilling story of the music he loves and his biographical adventures on the way to his incredible career in theater and music.

Hershey Felder: The Piano and Me (through August 23, 2026)

59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 646-892-7999 or visit http://www.59E59.org

Running time: one hour and 45 minutes without an intermission