St. Joseph, Mo. —Jan. 30, 2014—Juilliard-trained pianist Kimball Gallagher will stop at Missouri Western State University as he nears the end of a 7-year concert tour of seven continents, 30 countries and more than 40,000 audience members. Gallagher will showcase original compositions, music from different cultures and traditional classics for the piano during a recital at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5 in the Potter Hall Theater. He will also present a lecture on entrepreneurship for Missouri Western music students, titled “Creating Possibility: Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Mindset,” at noon Friday, Feb. 6 in Potter Hall room 108. Both events are free and open to the public.

Kimball’s worldwide concert tour will conclude with a final concert at Carnegie Hall this April. It began with a simple recital in a living room, an experience that sparked inspiration within the young artist and irrevocably altered his career.

“Performing in the intimate setting of a home was completely different than performing in a concert hall,” Gallagher said. “It changed me in a profound way, and it made me realize how incredibly powerful music is to help foster human connection. I wanted to harness that energy and take it into less-explored settings, and do something a little different with my career.”

The 88 Concert Tour inspired by that experience grew into a larger initiative that has included more than 300 performances, including 84 home concerts, and has taken Gallagher across all seven continents, including Antarctica. Performance settings have ranged from living rooms in Fiji to the Cairo Opera House, to being hosted by Oscar-winning actor Ethan Hawke, to gatherings at the United Nations in New York, to classrooms across rural schools in Taiwan.

For information about Gallagher’s appearances at Missouri Western, call the Department of Music at 816-271-4420 or email Dr. Nathanael May, assistant professor of music, at nmay@missouriwestern.edu. Learn more about the 88 Concert Tour atkimballgallagher.com/.