News from the College of Musical Arts

Robert Satterlee, Associate Professor of Piano, will travel to China in May for concerts and master classes at the Shenyang Conservatory of Music and the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu.

BOWLING GREEN, O.—The College of Musical Arts at Bowling Green State University invites the community to “Experience the Top” during the 2013-14 Festival Series. Highlighting performances in a variety of categories, the series features artists who are rising to the top. Series tickets are available now online at the BGSU box office.

The series begins on Sept. 28 in Kobacker Hall, where guests can listen to outstanding young musicians at a live taping of the popular National Public Radio show “From the Top,” hosted by acclaimed pianist Christopher O’Riley, who also performed as a soloist in the 2012 BGSU Festival Series.

What began as a radio experiment in 2000 quickly became one of the fastest growing and most popular weekly classical music programs on public radio. Broadcast on nearly 250 stations nationwide to an audience of more than 700,000 listeners each week, “From the Top” celebrates the performances and stories of America’s best pre-college classical musicians.

“‘From the Top’ gives young musicians the stage but lets them act their age. It’s serious music but classically kids,” said The New York Times.

Continuing the series, guests will experience an extravaganza of BGSU’s top artistic talent on Dec. 6 at a special holiday concert that will be part of the annual ArtsX event. In the first ever such large-scale collaboration, the College of Musical Arts, the School of Art, and the departments of theater and film, creative writing, and dance will present an artistic showcase themed “Wonderland.” The concert will include ensembles from the University and community, as well as readings, performances and artistic expressions celebrating the season from students and faculty in theater, film, dance and fine art. This is a holiday event that encompasses all the talents among the arts at BGSU, and will be an evening for all ages.

In the spring of 2014, Festival Series will welcome one of today’s top pianists, Jeremy Denk, performing on Feb. 15. “Mr. Denk, clearly, is a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs, in whatever combination – both for his penetrating intellectual engagement with the music and for the generosity of his playing,” said the New York Times.

An American pianist with an international reach, Denk has steadily built a reputation as an unusual and compelling artist, with a broad and thought-provoking repertoire. He has appeared as soloist with many major orchestras in the United States and around the world. But beyond that, Denk is also known for his witty and personal music writing, which has appeared in The New Yorker and Newsweek, on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, on the NPR Music website and in his widely read blog.

The Festival Series concludes April 5, 2014, on a comic note with the renowned Improvised Shakespeare Company (ISC). Based on an audience suggestion, the company creates a fully improvised play in Elizabethan style. Each of the players has brushed up on his “thee’s” and “thou’s” to produce evening of off-the-cuff comedy using the language and themes of William Shakespeare. Any hour could be filled with power struggles, star-crossed lovers, sprites, kings, queens, rhyming couplets, insults, persons in disguise and all that we’ve come to expect from the pen of the Great Bard. The night could reveal a tragedy, comedy, or history. Nothing is planned out, rehearsed, or written. Each play is completely improvised, so each play is entirely new.

The Improvised Shakespeare Company, founded in 2005, has been performing its critically acclaimed show every Friday night at the world-famous iO Theater in Chicago and entertains audiences around the globe. It has been named Chicago’s best improvisation group by both the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Examiner and has received a New York Nightlife Award for “Best Comedic Performance by a Group.”

The Festival Series is one of the oldest running performance series at BGSU, and is made possible by the support of the community. Series tickets range from $58-$147 and are available online, or by calling the Arts Box Office at 419-372-8171. Individual event tickets will be available in August. Visit the Arts Box Office website for specific ticket prices and event times.

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Accomplished young classical musicians from northwest Ohio are invited to audition for a chance to appear on National Public Radio’s popular program “From the Top.” Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts will host a live taping of the preeminent showcase for young musicians, to be recorded at the Moore Musical Arts Center Sept. 28. The event will lead off the college’s 2013-14 Festival Series.

Associate Professor of Piano, Thomas Rosenkranz, will be presented in a solo tour of  China with performances in Shaoxing, Wenzhou, Leqing, Cixi, Ningbo, Houzhou and Jiaxing, from May 3rd-May 11th. On May 18th he will serve on the jury for the Spring Festival Competition in Shanghai, which is sponsored by Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. In addition he will give masterclasses at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu, and at the Xinghai Conservatory in Guangzhou.

Charles Saenz, Associate Professor of Trumpet, and Solungga Fang-Tzu Liu, Assistant Professor of Piano,  will present recitals and masterclasses in Brazil during the week of March 18-25, 2013.  The duo will perform in Porto Alegre, Campinas, and Sao Paolo during this tour.  Venues include the Theatro Sao Pedro http://www.teatrosaopedro.com.br/tsp/, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Artmahhas do Som, and Universidad de Campinas.

Dr. Cole Burger, class piano instructor, will perform in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall on Sunday, March 31.  He is a first place winner of the American Protégé International Piano and Strings Competition.

For more details, please visit http://americanprotege.com/piano&strings.htm.

For tickets, please visit www.carnegiehall.org.

32 pianists, chosen from the region’s schools (Univ of Michigan, BGSU, Michigan State, Central Michigan University, Wayne State Univ, Interlochen, etc.), performed all the Beethoven piano sonatas at the DSO’s Max Fisher Music Center.   Six of the 32 participants were selected to have their performances broadcast on WRCJ.  Two of those six chosen were  BGSU pianists Xueli Liu, who performed the Sonata in E-flat, Op. 31, No. 3, “The Hunt,” and Jianhong Hu, who played the Sonata in F-minor, Op. 57, the “Appassionata.”

Pianist Laura Melton will give recitals in February at these venues:

Thursday, February 14th, 8:00 pm — Stretansky Music Hall, Cunningham Center for Music and Art, Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA
Friday, February 15th, 8:00 pm — Barnes Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Sunday, February 17th, 8:00 pm — Rosch Recital Hall, SUNY-Fredonia, Fredonia, NY

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Semi-finalists have been selected in the third annual David D. Dubois Piano Competition at the Bowling Green State University College of Musical Arts. Contest winners will receive $3,000 for first place, $2,000 for second place and $1,000 for third place. Finalists will also be invited to apply to appear on the National Public Radio show “From the Top” with Christopher O’Riley, which will be broadcast live from BGSU on Sept. 28.

Competing in the next round, to be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Feb. 9 in BGSU’s Kobacker Hall, will be:

Vivian Anderson, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Mark Bixel, Bluffton, Ohio; Ariela Bohrod, Interlochen Arts Academy, Mich. (Madison, Wis.); Sasha Bult-Ito, Interlochen Arts Academy (Fairbanks, Alaska);
Menghan Cao, Interlochen Arts Academy (China); Hannah Che, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Jiakung Feng, Hudson, Ohio; April Gao, Sylvania, Ohio; Stephanie Heist, Oberlin, Ohio; Ruyi Jiao, Charlotte, N.C.; Arata Kaku, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Zachary Kleman, Canterbury, N.J.; Geoffrey Kocks, Grand Blanc, Mich.; Sang O Lee, Interlochen Arts Academy (Bangkok, Thailand); Evelyn Mo, Oak Hill, Va.; Charles Oestreich, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Patrick Pan, Houston, Texas; Jiayin Lisa Peng, Shaker Heights, Ohio; Lorenzo Aldrett Ranal, Interlochen Arts Academy (Mexico); Trenton Takaki, Wilmette, Ill.; Kevin Takeda, Interlochen Arts Academy (Indian Wells, Calif.); Athena Tsianos, Glendora, Calif.; Joseph Vaz, Cincinnati, Ohio; Fung Ting Yan, Interlochen Arts Academy (Hong Kong), and Xinyi Michelle Zhao, Interlochen Arts Academy.

Pianists selected from that round will compete in the final round from 9 a.m. to noon on Feb. 10. Judges for the competition include piano professors from BGSU along with Dubois Piano Festival and BGSU Festival Series guest artists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe. The two pianists, who perform as a team, will also be giving a master class for students at 2:30 p.m. Feb. 8 in Kobacker Hall. The master class is free and open to the public.

The piano competition is also part of the Dubois Piano Festival and includes a performance by the piano duo at 8 p.m. Feb. 9 in Kobacker Hall. To purchase tickets online for this performance, visit http://bgsu.edu/arts or call 419-372-8171.

Assistant Professor of Piano, Thomas Rosenkranz was recently a guest professor at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand. He gave a series of masterclasses on chamber music and solo piano. In addition, He performed a new years celebration concert entitled “Thomas Rosenkranz and Friends” with local Thai classical musicians at the Siam Ratchada Music Auditorium in downtown Bangkok.