Composed in 1911 and subtitled Los majos enamorados (The Gallants in Love), Goyescas was inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya. Granados later wrote a one-act opera, also entitled Goyescas, that uses melodies from the piano suite.

Skyrm has appeared as a piano soloist and collaborative artist throughout the United States and Europe. Recent appearances include recitals at the international conference of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America at the National Music Museum in Vermillion and at the International Festival of Spanish Music in Mojácar, Spain, as well as recitals in North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. She combines performing the standard piano repertoire with research interests in early keyboards and Spanish and Latin American keyboard music. Her performances have been broadcast in the USA on public radio and on public access television. Skyrm has recorded 18th century Spanish and Portuguese keyboard music on a rare Portuguese fortepiano from the collections of the National Music Museum (Treasures of Iberian Keyboard Music, Music & Arts). She has given presentations for the Music Teachers National Association, the European Piano Teachers Association, the College Music Society, the American Musical Instrument Society, the Diego Fernandez International Festival of Spanish Keyboard Music and many others. Skyrm recently published Anthology of Eighteenth-Century Spanish Keyboard Music (Wayne Leupold Editions, 2010), which features music of lesser-known native Spanish composers. She will be performing one work from the Anthology in the recital.

Skyrm holds degrees in piano performance from the College of Idaho, the University of Cincinnati and the University of Colorado, Boulder. She was a prize winner in the Mason and Hamlin Idaho state auditions and the regional auditions and the recipient of an award from the Cincinnati Three Arts Foundation. She studied with master teacher Ilonka Deckers-Küszler in Milan, Italy, for a number of years. Other teachers include Fern Nolte Davidson, Larry Graham, and Ray Dudley, piano; Malcolm Bilson, fortepiano; and Bernard Brauchli, clavichord. In 2006 she was named the first recipient of the University of South Dakota’s College of Fine Arts Biennial Distinguished Professor Award. She teaches studio and class piano and piano literature at the University of South Dakota, where she has been on the faculty since 1988.

Her recital begins at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 28, in Colton Recital Hall at the Warren M. Lee Center for the Fine Arts at USD.

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