Malinee Peris
"I try to study and understand each composition-no, I try to go beyond that-to be the medium through which the agony and the ecstasy of the composer and his writing can be communicated to an audience.
She continued the piano with Alix Cockburn and gave her first solo recital at age 12 in Colombo where she performed Johann Sebastian Bach, C.P.
[3] The government of Ceylon followed by granting her another scholarship for her musical studies in Europe as well and she left for London accompanied by her father on October 26, 1947.
She continued violin with Isolde Menges at the Royal College, chamber music with Arthur Jacobs, and history and composition with Dr. Herbert Howells.
In the United States Peris has worked with Leon Fleisher, Earl Wilde, and Ilona Kabos.
A critic at The Washington Evening Star exclaimed: ‘I have never heard these much-played pieces in as searchingly beautiful performances.” In 1958 toured the Far East, 1960 Concerts in London and for BBC Radio and Television, and 1964-67 featured engagements in West Germany, Bombay, Madras and New Delhi.
She was awarded the title of Kala Keerthi by the government of Sri Lanka in 1993, that nation’s highest honor in the arts.
She gave the North American debut of Ned Rorem’s’ 3rd Sonata at a recital at Expo 67 in Montreal, Canada.
Douglas A. de Silva (1927-1995) career diplomat, Sri Lankan Ambassador to Belgium, Portugal, and the European Community (1982-1986) and an executive at the World Bank Washington DC.
She continues to play an active role as a reader and Lay Eucharistic Minister at the Washington National Cathedral, and is on the Board of “Dumbarton Concerts” which in addition to its Chamber Music series operates the “ Inner City- Inner Child” program for the benefit of disadvantaged children in Washington DC.
The Sri Lanka Foundation of America presented Peris with a Lifetime Achievement Award in November 2007.
Extracts from Paul Hume's (music critic Washington Post) commentary on Malinee Peris's recording of works by Debussy, Ravel and De Falla (Ace of Clubs Records) broadcast by Radio WGMS Washington DC in the series In Recital – February 21, 1968.
"The reason I find this interesting is that in her appearances in Washington Miss Peris has in Chopin and in Mozart and in other works given a superb impression of her ability to take the more intimate and delicate side of the piano and make it a thing of singular poetry and beauty.
