Andre Watts' Tucson connection including lifelong friendship, symphony concert

Pianist André Watts, whose televised debut with the New York Philharmonic as a 16-year-old in 1963 launched an international career of more than a half-century, died this week of prostate cancer. He was 77.

Watts was lifelong friends with retired Tucson pianist Sanda Schuldmann and her husband, cellist and playwright Harry Clark.

The friendship of more than 50 years began when they were in their early 20s and just starting their careers. Watts was a concert pianist, and Clark and Schuldmann performed as a chamber music duo. The couple went on to launch Chamber Music Plus in Connecticut in the early 1980s and brought it to Clark’s native Tucson in 2002.

Chamber Music Plus presented a series of so-called musical portraits, penned by Clark, of famous musical figures. Actors would perform them as monologues while Clark and Schuldmann performed the music connected to the central character.

Watts was part of the series in Tucson in 2011 when he joined English actor Michael York for the world premiere of Clark’s “Lisztian Loves.” Clark wrote the piece for Watts.

Watts returned to Tucson five years later for his one and only performance with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. He performed Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto.

In an interview before that concert, Watts recalled how he had met Clark and Schuldmann in Austin, Texas, when he was holding a master class, and Schuldmann was in the audience. He later invited her backstage, and the two made a connection. He met Clark when he was just 21 and was soloing with the Hartford Symphony; Cark was the orchestra’s principal cellist.

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“We are old partners in crime,” Watts joked of the trio’s long friendship.

“Sometimes you find mentors and people you worship but they are older than you are,” Schuldmann told the Star in 2016. “But what a blessing to meet someone who is the same age as you. We get to grow old together.”

Watts joined the faculty of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2004. He said in 2016 that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

He was nominated for five Grammy Awards and won Most Promising New Classical Recording Artist in 1964 for the Liszt concerto with Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. He was nominated for a 1995 Emmy Award for Outstanding Cultural Program and received a 2011 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal from then-President Barack Obama.

Watts is survived by his wife Joan Brand Watts, stepson William Dalton, stepdaughter Amanda Rees and seven step-grandchildren. There were no immediate funeral plans.