Famed Spanish cellist Pablo Casals once said: “Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.”

The beautiful and poetic will be featured when the eighth annual Bermuda Piano Festival takes place at Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art next week, with concerts on June 17, 19 and 21.

Alex Tuchman, artistic director for the festival, presents a diverse and eclectic variety of composers and performances featured in the piano festival’s line-ups and musical programmes.

The festival will showcase solo piano, four-hands, and chamber music. In addition to four outstanding pianists, the piano festival highlights cellist Sumire Kudo, of the New York Philharmonic, and violinist Brian Fox, of the New York City Ballet Orchestra.

I had to the opportunity to discuss the Bermuda Piano Festival with Mr Tuchman.

Dill: What was the Genesis for the Bermuda Piano Festival? What inspired you to do the first one?

Tuchman: Well, it’s connected to my story and my time here in Bermuda as a resident. My family was here for about ten years before I left for school to study piano performance. I thought maybe there could be a future for some kind of piano festival here in Bermuda where the arts are appreciated and there are similar types of concerts.

Back in 2017 we launched our first festival here at Masterworks in the gallery. The idea was to bring performers of a high level to Bermuda to perform and to engage with students. I wanted to create an event that the community enjoyed and looked forward to every year.

Dill: How do you define success for the Bermuda Piano Festival?

Tuchman: Success would be creating three different concert programmes. We have three concerts that cover a variety of musical styles or focus on a particular theme. We hope to appeal to lots of people and listeners of all ages – regardless of backgrounds, levels of experience, or no experience, playing the piano.

Listeners can attend and have an enjoyable evening. In addition to performance, we do private lessons in a master class. That’s the other part of the festival success would be encouraging students of all ages to sign up for a lesson and to continue to keep music as part of their life. Whether students have professional ambitions or simply play for pleasure, we want to inspire them to keep going with their piano playing.

Dill: Would you consider this to be a series of classical concerts given the featured composers?

Tuchman: Our focus has been on classical music and certainly this year we have three concerts that centre on a classical repertoire. We have had jazz in the past. It is something that we bring in from time to time. We would like to do it next year – to have a jazz evening, but our focus is on classical music; centred on the solo piano and piano with other instruments.

Dill: How did you determine which composers to feature in the Bermuda Piano Festival?

Tuchman: This year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Maurice Ravel so it is natural that we would want to highlight his music. French music is sort of an extension of Ravel, so we have a French repertoire in each programme. We open with Ravel’s Mother Goose and typically come up with a theme or a composer that we want to explore. This is the foundation for the rest of the festival programme.

Dill: How did you select the performers?

Tuchman: We start with the programme. Once we have an idea of the theme and the composer style we want to explore and highlight in a particular concert, I look around to see who in New York or any other cultural centre – who’s playing this music at a really high level and who might be a good fit for the Bermuda Piano Festival. Usually by doing this we assemble a great cast of performers. The other side of this is we offer classes and private lessons; so, I want the people who come here not just to be great performers, but also great teachers. The kind of people that students can relate to and enjoy engaging with during the festival.

Dill: Miles Davis, the great jazz trumpeter, was a big fan of Ravel and Debussy and they influenced his masterpiece Kind of Blue. Miles explored modal jazz, how do you see the correlation between Ravel, Debussy and Miles Davis?

Tuchman: I think Ravel, Debussy and a little later their contemporaries were so taken with the new harmonies that were creeping into the musical language. So many of the conventions that had governed music for centuries were being rethought or reinvented or discarded and there are a lot of elements in this new music that could be heard as “jazzy” or would influence jazz. There’s no doubt they had a huge influence on jazz composers and Ravel loved that style. You had big influences which were incorporated into jazz music and no doubt, into the music of Miles Davis.

Dill: Describe the appreciations or mindset you would like the audience to bring to the concerts?

Tuchman: All people should feel welcome to come and experience the festival. There’s no threshold for experience or training or anything for the performances. I think people who have a background in music will have their perspective and will enjoy it their way.

Someone who has never been to a concert before will find something to hold onto and hopefully will love the sounds they’re hearing. There are really no qualifications – I would say just come with an open mind and see what you hear and see what you like. We hope you enjoy the music.

• The Bermuda Piano Festival is at Masterworks on June 17, 19 and 21, with performances starting at 7.30pm. All concerts are free and open to the public