Nov. 16: Master Players 'Kantrio'
UD Master Players concert to highlight 'great musical family'
11:37 a.m., Nov. 14, 2012--The University of Delaware Master Players Concert Series (MPCS) will resume with a concert titled “Kantrio” featuring Paul Kantor, Timothy Kantor and Virginia Weckstrom at 8 p.m., Friday, Nov. 16, in the Gore Recital Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts.
The innovative chamber concert is part of the MPCS Great Musical Families Recital Series.
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“Many master musicians come from large musical families,” said Xiang Gao, Master Players artistic director and Trustees Distinguished Professor of Music, “and when they perform together on stage, the magic of music to come to life in a truly unforgettable way.”
This event features members of one of today’s most visible musical families, who will perform masterpieces for the violin, viola and piano by Mozart, Brahms, Bartók, and Shostakovich, among others.
Paul Kantor, violin teacher and mentor to Gao, makes his second MPCS appearance.
In addition to the concert, there will be three free masters classes from 1:25-2:30 p.m. Friday. Timothy Kantor will present a violin and chamber music master class in Gore Recital Hall, Paul Kantor will present a violin master class in Puglisi Orchestra Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts and Virginia Weckstrom will present a piano and chamber music master class in 118 Amy E. du Pont Music Building.
Gao encourages music lovers to book their tickets soon for the concert, saying, “MPCS concerts are sold out quickly these days. If you can get MPCS tickets soon enough, you will have the rare opportunity to witness two generations of violin music making. My own teacher, Prof. Paul Kantor will be featured. Prof. Kantor, one of the world’s most successful violin pedagogues and concert violinists, will make music with his family of renowned professional musicians to take your breath away.”
October performances online
For those who were unable to secure tickets to the sold-out “3Bs” Oct. 20 MPCS concert, performances by Gao and faculty pianist Julie Nishimura are available online in high definition-quality video recordings.
The two artists collaborated to perform some of the most celebrated compositions ever written for the violin and piano by Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. These works include Brahms’ Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 7 in C Minor, and a surprise performance of the Double Violin Concerto by Bach featuring three of Gao’s current students, Gabriella Stout, Justin Chou and Andrew Gentzsch
About the performers
Paul Kantor recently has been appointed as the Sallie Shepherd Professor of Music at the Shepherd School of Rice University. For the past 10 years he served as the Eleanor H. Biggs Distinguished Professor of Violin at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
A graduate of the Juilliard School, he studied violin with Dorothy DeLay and chamber music with Robert Mann. Kantor has performed as soloist with numerous symphony orchestras and was a member of the Berkshire Chamber Players and the New York, Lenox and New Haven string quartets. He has served as concertmaster of six ensembles, including the Aspen Chamber Symphony, New Haven Symphony and Lausanne Chamber Orchestra.
Kantor has recorded for CRI, Mark Records, Delos and Equilibrium and has served as artist-in-residence at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto and as an artist-faculty member of the Aspen Music Festival since 1980. Kantor is the co-founder of the Gabriel Del Orbe Violin Program in the Dominican Republic.
Virginia Weckstrom recently has been appointed as an artist/faculty member at the Shepherd School of Rice University. For 10 years she was a member of the collaborative piano and chamber music faculties at the Cleveland Institute of Music where she also taught a sonata class.
She received a bachelor of arts degree with honors from the Western College for Women and a master of music degree from the Yale School of Music. Her teachers have included Ruby Hamlin, Eleanore Vail, John Kirkpatrick, John Perry, Jacqueline Marcault and Lilian Kallir.
She was director of chamber music and taught piano at the Residential College of the University of Michigan, and she has been on the artist faculty for the Aspen Music School and Festival for 27 summers. Active in both solo and chamber music performances, Weckstrom has been heard on National Public Radio with the Wall Street Chamber Players. She was pianist/harpsichordist with the New Haven Symphony and has performed with the Ann Arbor and Flint Symphony Orchestras in Michigan.
Deeply committed to arts education, she served as chair of the piano department at the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, Conn., and was a founder of the School for Performing Arts in Ann Arbor.
Tim Kantor recently was appointed concertmaster of the Evansville Philharmonic in Indiana. An avid chamber musician, he is a founding member of the Larchmere String Quartet, recently appointed as the Eykamp String Quartet in Residence at the University of Evansville.
Kantor has also performed as a member of the Kuttner String Quartet in residence at Indiana University, the chamber music and “Quartet in the Community” residencies at the Banff Centre, the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar. He has performed with many of today’s leading musicians, including Joshua Bell, Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Atar Arad, Evelyne Brancart, Eric Kim and Alex Kerr.
Kantor is devoted to the performance of new music and has participated as soloist, concertmaster and chamber musician with the New Music Ensembles at CIM and Indiana University. He also performs as a soloist and chamber musician with the Percussion Plus Project at DePauw University and with Margaret Brouwer’s Blue Streak Ensemble.
He graduated with honors from Bowdoin College and has a master’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music. His former teachers include Jaime Laredo, Paul Kantor, Stephen Kecskemethy and Andrew Jennings.
Future performances: Holiday Pops
MPCS will present “Holiday Pops: A Family Concert” at 3 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 8, in Mitchell Hall.
The third annual MPCS holiday concert, an afternoon event designed especially for families, guarantees to be an unforgettable musical experience – not to mention a wonderful addition to 2012 holiday festivities.
The pops concert features the UD Chamber Orchestra and many interactive performances, including Toy Symphony by Leopold Mozart, Spectacular Clarinets, Strings’ Attack!, Three Shanties and Dr. Smith’s Horns for the young audiences, as well as a medley of familiar holiday classics.
Following the concert, MPCS will hold an “instrument petting zoo” from 4:30-5:30 p.m., which is a fun activity for the whole family.
Tickets
The state-of-the-art Gore Recital Hall in the Roselle Center for the Arts only seats 200, so those interested in attending MPCS concerts are encouraged to purchase their tickets in advance. MPCS tickets cost $25 for the general public; $20 for senior adults, UD faculty, staff and alumni; and $10 for students with ID.
Tickets are available at the REP box office in the Roselle Center for the Arts, telephone 302-831-2204.
For more information about MPCS, see the new website.