A 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization, Tax ID # 33-0025613
Producer - Dr. Joan RuBane
Dr. Joan RuBane has served on the Artistic Committee and the Waring Board of Directors since 2007. In 2019, she became Associate Artistic Director. She is currently Founder, President and Artistic Director of International Classical Concerts of the Desert 2006-current. Before that she was President of the Sunday Afternoon Concerts at the Palm Springs Art Museum from 1996 until 2006. She received her Bachelors of Music from Eastman School of Music, her Masters and Doctor of Musical Arts from University of Southern California, and was an invited fellow for post-doctoral studies from Harvard University in 1979. She taught piano at her own Studio from 1980 until 1983, and then from 1987 until 1996 when she relocated to the Coachella Valley. From 1983 to 1987 Dr. RuBane studied and received her JD degree from Western State University College of Law. She is so happy to be able to devote herself to the joys of classical music consistently since 1987.
Michael Rolland Davis, Producer Emeritus
MICHAEL ROLLAND DAVIS served on the Board of the Virginia Waring International Piano Competition as Vice President of Productions, and he produces all our events from 2015 through 2019.
Michael was born in 1949 and has been involved in music since he was a child. He began studying the cello when he was eight and continued with that instrument as well as various other instruments through high school. At university he studied architecture and business administration.
In 1969 he was inducted into the US Army and spent a year tour of duty in Viet Nam as a radio operator.
He first lived in Palm Springs from 1971-1978, where he met and began working for the internationally known virtuoso concert pianist Earl Wild, as his business manager, publicist and recording producer. This relationship lasted for 38 years until Earl Wild passed in 2010 at the age of 94. With Earl Wild, (who was the first Artistic Director of the new Desert Museum), he was associated with the Palm Springs Art Museum as assistant Artistic Director of various musical events in the Annenberg Theatre for three years, including the very successful one week Festival of Piano Music held in 1976 and again in 1977.
After moving to New York City in 1978, Davis became Program Director of the newly organized Wolf Trap Chamber Group who performed at the only National Park for the Performing Arts, Wolf Trap, located just outside Washington D.C.
In the late 1970s Davis formed a production company and began producing and mastering audio CD recordings for Earl Wild as well as other concert pianists — licensing these recordings to major labels such as RCA/BMG, EMI and Sony Classics.
In 1997, he decided to start his own record label called IVORY CLASSICS where today there are approximately 100 CD releases available through his website www.IvoryClassics.com with distribution in ten countries.
Ivory Classics, Earl Wild and Michael himself as original recording producer, received a Grammy award for an outstanding Earl Wild recording devoted to piano transcriptions in 1997.
Twenty years ago, Michael formed a music publishing company that is ASCAP affiliated where he publishes and distributes approximately 40 printed piano compositions.
In 2006 Michael moved back to Palm Springs and in January of 2012 purchased a unit at Desert Island in Rancho Mirage where he is on the board of their HOA.
Bruce Franchini, emeritus Producer
Bruce Franchini (1944-2013) was a Producer/Director whose work encompassed a wide variety of programming and performers. He was equally comfortable working with film and tape, shooting single and multi-camera productions, both live and pre-recorded. He produced and directed for ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, BBC-TV, DISNEY CHANNEL, as well as for independent production companies and corporate clients. He won two Daytime Emmys for directing food programming, one in 1997 for Baking With Julia and one in 2000 for Julia & Jacques Cooking at Home. Franchini married his partner of 27 years, concert pianist and composer John Bayless, shortly before his death.
Credits
Programming – Lifestyle / Food
- Audrey Hepburn’s Gardens of the World
- Julia Child & Jacques Pepin: Cooking at Home
- Julia Child: Cooking with Master Chefs
- In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs
- Baking with Julia
- Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food
- Artists Table with Jacques Pepin & Itzhak Perlman
- Cooking in Concert with Julia Child & Jacques Pepin
- Cooking in Concert with Julia Child & Graham Kerr
- Lidia’s Family Table
- Lidia’s Italian Kitchen
- Lidia’s Italy
- Jacques Pepin: Fast Food My Way
- Jacques Pepin’s Techniques
- Essential Pepin
- Chefs Story
- Simply Ming with Ming Tsai
- Michael Chiarello’s Napa: Casual Cooking
- Weir Cooking in the Wine Country with Joanne Weir
- The DeMedici Kitchen with Lorenza DeMedici
- Cooking at the Academy
- New York’s Master Chefs
- Cooking Light: A Holiday Celebration
Programming – Arts / Drama / Music / Dance
- Garrison Keillor’s A Prarie Home Companion
- Great Performances
- Theater in America: Cyrano de Bergerac
- Los Angeles Philharmonic Broadcasts
- San Francisco Opera Broadcasts
- San Francisco Symphony Broadcasts
- Vienna Philharmonic Broadcasts
- San Francisco Ballet Broadcasts
- Linda Ronstadt’s Canciones de mi Padre
- An Evening with Rosemary Clooney
- Barbara Cook in Concert
- Judy Collins: Going Home
- Sing Out America with Bobby Mc Ferrin & The Kingston Trio
- An Evening with Nelson Riddle
- When You Wish Upon a Star: Linda Ronstadt Music Video
- Paulene Myers: The World of My America (Stage & Television)
- The Guiding Light
- Love of Life
Programming – Documentary
- All The President’s Men with Pierre Salinger
- The Age of Uncertainty with Ronald Reagan
- Microbes & Men with Dr. Jonas Salk
- The Age of Leonardo with Ben Gazzara
- The State of the Language with Isaac Bashevis Singer
- The Wizardry of Oz with Margaret Hamilton & Ray Bolger
- Disney Showcase: Videogames – The Electronic Epidemic
- Readers Digest: America The Beautiful
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art – 3 Art Specials for PBS
Programming – Corporate
- J.C. Penney
- Readers Digest
- Celebrity Cruises
- Seabourn Cruises
- Oceania Cruises
- Cunard Line
- Braun, Inc.
- Kitchen Aid
- Angel/EMI Records
- Warner-Atlantic Records
- Southern Living Magazine
- Cuisinart
- Polaroid Corporation
- Granna Padano
Awards & Affiliations
- National & Local Emmy Awards
- Peabody Award
- Chicago Film Festival Award
- San Francisco Film Festival Award
- Directors Guild of America
- National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
- International Association of Culinary Professionals
- BBC-TV Fellow
- Virginia Waring International Piano Competition, Board Member
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To excite, educate, and engage the community at large with the joy of classical piano by presenting, promoting, and nurturing classical music through live piano performance including international competitions, concerts, and local educational outreach programs for all ages.