Sherry Shelton has played concerts across the United States, Europe, Australia and Singapore. On Saturday night she will be in a club room in Invercargill, and one of the pieces on her programme was written just down the road.
The retired international concert pianist, who lives in Bluff, is giving the Music at 7pm Piano Concert at the Southland Women's Club on Saturday, the Southland Express reported on Friday. The concert is a fundraiser for the club. Among the works she will play is Nocturne by the late Invercargill composer Mary Brett, alongside music by Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Mozart.
Shelton told the paper that Brett might not be widely known, but she was a "very good composer".
The concert will run for about an hour, and she has picked pieces she thinks the audience will enjoy. "Everything's what I would call reflection music," she said. Most of the programme is classical, but the final 20 minutes or so will be more modern, and notes on the back of the programme will tell the audience about each piece. A concert she put on in 2021 was well received, she said.
Now in her 80s, Shelton reckons she plays better than she did when she was younger. Her explanation was simple: "I have more time to practice."
Her career has been a long one. RNZ Concert, which profiled her in 2024, described her as American-born, and as an organist, pianist, harpist and singer who had spent many years as director of music at several large churches in the United States. She came to New Zealand in 1988 to become music director at Devonport Methodist Church in Auckland. A 2020 concert listing on Eventfinda said she had also retired after 16 years at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in Auckland, and that she had studied early Italian organ music in Siena.
She now runs a music studio in Bluff, RNZ reported. That profile also mentioned a couple of less usual details: she has held a 100-ton certificate as a sea captain, and has owned a hotel.
The piano is only half of it. Shelton is also a concert organist, and she told the Southland Express she hopes to give a few organ recitals in 2027.
For Saturday, though, the instrument is the piano and the room is the Southland Women's Club. The music starts at 7pm, it is billed as reflective, and for one piece at least, the composer was a local.
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