Parsons and Poole Concert and Masterclass
Photo credit: Gary Houlder via IMG Artists
2026 Parsons and Poole Concert and Masterclass featuring Ingrid Fliter
The Parsons and Poole Concert and Masterclass was created by alumni to honour Margaret Parsons and Clifford Poole, and to bring world-class musicianship to Western. Learn more
In 2026, we will welcome Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter as our featured artist, who has won the admiration and hearts of audiences around the world for her passionate yet sensitive music making and effortless technique. Winner of the 2006 Gilmore Artist Award, and the only woman to have ever received this honour, Ms. Fliter divides her time between North America and Europe.
Concert
Saturday, October 24 | 7:30pm | von Kuster Hall | approx. 2 hours
Tickets will go on sale in July.
Masterclass
Sunday, October 25 | 10am–12pm | von Kuster Hall
Free admission. No registration required.
Visitor Information
For tips on transit, parking, guest expectations, accessibility and more please visit our Audience Information page.
Parsons and Poole 2026
Ingrid Fliter
Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter has won the admiration and hearts of audiences around the world for her passionate yet sensitive music making and effortless technique. Winner of the 2006 Gilmore Artist Award, and the only woman to have ever received this honour, Ms. Fliter divides her time between North America and Europe.
Highlights of Ms Fliter’s 2025/26 season include orchestral appearances with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, Oregon Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Gulbenkian Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan, and recitals at the Mänttä Music Festival in Finland, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Poland, and the London Piano Festival at King’s Place. Recent orchestral engagements include appearances with the Auckland Philharmonia, Minnesota Orchestra, and the Sydney, Singapore, Vancouver, and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras.
Ingrid Fliter made her American orchestral debut with the Atlanta Symphony just days after the announcement of her Gilmore award. Since then, she has appeared with most of the major North American orchestras including the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, the Boston, San Francisco, St. Louis, Toronto, Detroit, National, Dallas, Houston, Cincinnati, New World, San Diego and New Jersey symphonies among others, as well as at the Mostly Mozart, Tanglewood, Grant Park, Aspen, Ravinia, Blossom, Tippet Rise and Brevard summer festivals. Equally busy as a recitalist, Ms. Fliter has performed in New York at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the Metropolitan Museum and the 92nd Street Y, at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, and in Boston, San Francisco, Vancouver and Detroit, as well as for the Van Cliburn Foundation in Fort Worth. In Europe, Ms. Fliter has performed in recital in Amsterdam, London at both Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall, Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Prague, Salzburg, Cologne and Stockholm, and participated in festivals such as La Roque D’Antheron, Prague Autumn and the BBC Proms.
A Linn recording artist, Ms. Fliter’s most recent recording is the first of two discs of Chopin Mazurkas. Ms. Fliter has recorded both Chopin concertos and the Mendelssohn and Schumann concertos with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Jun Märkl as well as the complete Chopin Preludes and Chopin Nocturnes for the same label. Her two all-Chopin recordings for EMI earned her the reputation as one of the pre-eminent interpreters of that composer while her most recent EMI recording is an all-Beethoven CD featuring the Pathetique and Appassionata sonatas. Live recordings of Ms. Fliter performing works by Beethoven and Chopin at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam are available on the VAI Audio label.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1973, Ingrid Fliter began her piano studies in Argentina with Elizabeth Westerkamp. In 1992 she moved to Europe where she continued her studies in Freiburg with Vitaly Margulis, in Rome with Carlos Bruno, and with Franco Scala and Boris Petrushansky at the Academy “Incontrui col Maestro” in Imola, Italy, where she has been teaching since 2015. Ms. Fliter began playing public recitals at the age of eleven and made her professional orchestra debut at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires at the age of 16. Already the winner of several competitions in Argentina, she went on to win prizes at the Cantu International Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni Competition in Italy and in 2000 was awarded the silver medal at the Frederic Chopin Competition in Warsaw.
Photo credits: Anton Dressler (top right), Gary Houlder (bottom left)
Margaret Parsons and Clifford Poole
Glamorous, talented and world-famous, the husband and wife pianists were not typical professors at Western in the 1950s. Margaret Parsons and Clifford Poole balanced performance tours as a piano duo with teaching and inspiring young musicians. They also recorded their work, created educational materials and started the Gilbert & Sullivan productions still going strong in London today.
They came to London in 1948 to teach at the Western Ontario Music Conservatory, Music Teachers' College and Department of Music at Western. Already well known, the pair joined the staff two years after Alfred Rose, Gustav Mahler’s nephew. Over the next few years, the three organizations evolved, each focusing on a different level of music education. As J.R.W. Gwynne-Timothy wrote in his Western’s First Century: “The concerts of the well-known piano duo, Clifford Poole and his wife Margaret Parsons, carried far and wide the name of music at Western as public relations emissaries for the college.”
A group of alumnae who studied with Parsons and Poole created an artist-in-residence program, called the Parsons and Poole Concert and Masterclass to carry their names into the future. The project gives students an opportunity to study with musicians who bring the same level of acclaim and expertise as Parsons and Poole.
The benefits of the Parsons-Poole Legacy Project will go beyond the music faculty, providing opportunities for inter-disciplinary scholarship and cultural enrichment for the community. This is a fitting continuation of the kind of projects the duo undertook while in London. They composed and arranged piano music for young players, and their Parsons-Poole Festival Piano Series and Poole’s many pedagogical piano pieces remain favourites. The pair also established a community concert series and toured to many Ontario towns and cities, often with students to showcase their talents and gain experience in performing.
Read the feature article about the history of this series and the establishment of the endowed fund. (published in March 2022)
For donor-related inquiries, contact Carole Metron at cmetron3@uwo.ca
For event-related inquiries, contact musicevents@uwo.ca
Past Parsons and Poole Performers
- Sir Stephen Hough, October 2025
- Dang Thai Son, September 2024
- Yekwon Sunwoo, October 2023
- Louise Bessette, October 2022
- Jon Kimura Parker, October 2021
- Marc-André Hamelin, October 2020
- Stewart Goodyear, October 2019
- Sara Davis Buechner, October 2018
- Charles Richard-Hamelin, October 2017
- John O'Conor, October 2016
- Anagnoson and Kinton, piano duo, October 2015
- Angela Hewitt, October 2014
- Menahem Pressler, October 2013
- Andre LaPlante, October 2012
