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Peter Gach has been a member of the music faculty at Palomar College for over 30 years. During that time he has performed several hundred concerts, and touched the hearts of many, many people. Gach functions as both a teacher and an artist in the Performing Arts Department. His dual roles are mutually supportive and complimentary: his artistry supports his teaching, and his teaching fulfills his artistic vision and imparts it to students. Gach's teaching activities have ranged from beginning classes for non-musicians who are just starting to read music as they learn to play the piano, to classes for music majors who are honing their performing skills in order to prepare for public appearances. His monograph Practice Makes Perfect: A Handbook for Musicians at Work details his methods of practicing, and has met with great success among students of music. (It is available in the Palomar College Bookstore.) He has written a companion volume The Perfect Performance: A Handbook for Musicians on Stage. Gach's performing repertoire over the years has spanned a wide gamut of musical styles and activities. He plays the "classics" - Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin and Liszt as well as contemporary works. Because of his Polish heritage, he feels a special affinity for Chopin. He holds a degree in Slavic languages, which enabled him to study at the Warsaw Conservatory in Warsaw, Poland (the same conservatory Chopin attended.) Fluent in Polish, he frequently returns there to perform.
He has performed all but one of the Beethoven piano concerti with the Palomar College Orchestra in addition to two world premiers and numerous other concerti. He also enjoys giving lecture-recitals explaining the details of the music he has programmed. Gach firmly believes that we honor the legacy of the great musicians of the past by performing music written by composers living now. Over the past twenty years he has performed many world premiers of works written specifically for him. In 2010, Gach released his third CD, Fresh Piano, featuring the works of living Southern California composers. The CD was produced with the help of a grant from the Palomar College Foundation and Innova Records with works by Ellen Weller, Norm Weston, William Bradbury, Roger Przytulski and Madelyn Byrne. Gach has also recorded CDs of Scott Joplin and Fryderyk Chopin.
Gach's lecture-recital on Chopin, presented in 2010 as part of the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth and recorded by PCTV (Palomar College Television) received First Prize in the international competition "Chopin in the XXIst Century Multimedia Competition."
Other composers of the 20 and 21st century also interest Gach. He is one of the few pianists to perform the Charles Ives First Sonata, a work of enormous scope and difficulty. He is also interested in the piano music of Karol Szymanowski, an early 20th century Polish composer. In 1998 he was invited by the Karol Szymanowski Society to perform at the composer's home in Zakopane, Poland. In 2009, Gach was performed the composer's Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra with the La Jolla Symphony, conducted by David Chase.
Improvisation is another area of musical development for Gach. Over the years, he has developed his own unique improvisational style, rooted in the classical tradition, yet exploring the boundaries of musical expression. He has done a series of concerts with the Palomar College Contemporary Dance Ensemble where he improvised music on various keyboard instruments to the movements of the dancers. He has also used this improvisational technique with the Palomar College Contemporary Theatre Ensemble. This involvement led to the co-creation, with theatre faculty professor Michael Mufson of the enthusiastically received performance piece Wireless City in which Gach created a sound track and improvised on amplified piano.
Gach currently serves as Chairperson of the Performing Arts Department, a position he has held since 2008. In November, 2010, Gach received the "Comet Award" from the college foundation for his work on behalf of Palomar College. After his planned retirement in May of 2012, Gach will continue to concertize.
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