Classical pianist Jane Coop says she’s happy with whatever she’s playing at the time

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON APRIL 6, 2022

By Steve Newton

As a concert pianist, Vancouver’s Jane Coop has performed at some of the most eminent venues in the world. She’s played at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Alice Tully Hall in New York City, the Beijing Concert Hall, and the Salle Gaveau in Paris.

But as Coop explains from her home near Fraser and 13th, the venue that stands out the most in her memory was the Bolshoi Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia, where she performed a program of works by Scarlatti, Beethoven, Fauré, Ravel, and Chopin in 1987.

“I suppose it’s not a very good thing to talk about today,” says Coop, referring to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, “but…it was at the big main concert hall and it was a solo recital for me, and just everything lined up perfectly for that concert. I was super well-prepared because I was on a tour, and the piano was fantastic, the hall was full, and the audience was so quiet and so appreciative, that everything was just kind of perfect. I’ll never forget it.”

Coop’s journey to international piano star started when she was just a kid in Calgary. Her parents were not musicians—her dad messed around on the piano, played a little by ear—but they were music lovers. The family inherited a pretty decent upright piano early on, and she had an older sister who started lessons when she was about six. It wasn’t long before Coop herself was drawn to the keys.

“My parents used to take us to symphony concerts,” she recalls, “and I remember hearing Van Cliburn when I was very very young, and meeting him afterwards—my teacher took me backstage. And I liked [Sviatoslav] Richter a lot, and let’s see who else. Well, the usual—[Arthur] Rubinstein, [Vladimir] Horowitz. And I ended up hearing those people live later in Toronto and Washington, D.C., so it was great.”

Coop was fortunate enough to have her musical career guided by some illustrious pianists. When she was 18 and attending the University of Toronto she studied with Anton Kuerti, then followed that up with more training under Leon Fleisher.

“They had pretty different physical approaches to the piano,” she notes, “technical approaches, but they were definitely compatible about interpretation and just the general understanding of music.”

Teaching is something that is near and dear to Coop’s heart. For over three decades she held the title of Professor of Piano and Chamber music at the UBC School of Music.

“It was a fantastic job,” she raves, looking back. “I put my whole self into it for 33 years, and I didn’t regret a single moment.”

“I’m not teaching now, though,” she adds, “because I decided to put my energy into my own playing—not that I wasn’t doing that all the way along. But I just felt I really needed a little bit of time and space, whereas when I was teaching full time and performing full time, I really had no time for anything. So now I’m just practicing my own things and occasionally I give a masterclass or somebody drops by and wants to play something for me. That’s great too.”

One of the things that keeps the Order of Canada recipient occupied these days is recording albums for her own Skylark Music. She’s got 17 releases out on the label so far, including two volumes of The Romantic Piano, collections of famous, shorter pieces from the 19th century, which she says have sold very well. Her latest album on Skylark, Three Keyboard Masters, sees her performing works by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and Bach, but she laughs when asked if those are her three favourite composers.