Shepherdstown, WV—Shepherd University’s 2015-2016 Music Salon Series opens with an evening of new jazz on Thursday, August 27th at 8:00 p.m. in W. H. Shipley Recital Hall of the Frank Arts Center with the Kevin Pace Quartet. Shepherd University music faculty Kevin Pace, Kurtis Adams and Anthony Pirog, along with D.C.’s own Larry Ferguson on drums, will perform original music, as well as songs by Elliott Smith, Radiohead, and new arrangements of jazz classics. The performance is free and open to the public.
A winner of the Louis Armstrong Jazz Award, bassist Kevin Pace is gaining the attention of the straight-ahead jazz scene. He has performed with musicians such as Gretchen Parlato, David “Fathead” Newman, Jon Metzger, Freddie Redd, Jon Ozment, Steve Fidyk, Steve Abshire, John Jensen, and Greg Hyslop, a four-star recording artist in Downbeat Magazine. Pace has toured throughout Germany and Austria as well as in his own area, including several spots at the East Coast Jazz Festival, where he returned as an assistant clinician for the 2002 festival and as a member of the Adam Janjigian Quartet in 2004 and 2005. A student of Jon Metzger, Tom Baldwin, and Charles Gambetta, Pace has an explosive, earthy, solid style that can be heard on several recordings. He is also active as a composer and arranger. Among other projects, Pace has completed the soundtrack for Elon University’s Global Studies CD-Rom (Carpe Viam Press, 2001) and “How To Carve A Pumpkin” (Beardog Productions, 2004), an independent film by Rady Large. As well as being an active jazz musician Pace has become one of Maryland and central North Carolina’s most reliable freelancing bassists performing in the orchestra of the Long Leaf Opera Company of Durham North Carolina and in pit orchestras for musicals such as “Urinetown,” “A Chorus Line,” “The Music Man,” “Company,” and over thirty more throughout the East Coast. Pace earned his B.A. in music from Elon College and has completed a MM in jazz performance at the University of Maryland. He joined the Shepherd University Music faculty in the fall of 2013.
On Thursday, September 10th, Washington, D.C.-based violinist Shu-Ting Yao and Shepherd piano faculty Yu-Hsuan Liao join forces for “An evening of Czech Music.” The program will feature important repertoire written for violin and piano around the turn of the twentieth century, including Janáček’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, and Hubay’s Carmen Fantasie Brillante.
The Atlantic Reed Consort, a quintet comprised of all reed instruments, will perform on Thursday October 8th. Featuring Emily Snyder on oboe, Brooke Emery on clarinet, Shepherd faculty Jeremy Koch on saxophone, John Romano on bass clarinet, and Eddie Sanders on bassoon, the Atlantic Reed Consort’s cutting edge sound and style embraces the experimental, as well as adding a new twist to the likes of Bach, Bartok and even Zappa. The Atlantic Reed Consort’s instrumentation lends a fresh new sound to the quintet medium bringing chamber music to a broad audience in an unexpected format.
Three’s Company – an evening of keyboard trios will take place on Thursday, January 28, 2015, featuring pianists Scott Beard, Yu-Hsuan Liao, and Laura Renninger. Keyboard trios, music for six hands at one piano, have been a unique part of the piano ensemble repertoire for over 200 years. Our Shepherd faculty pianists will present an entertaining and diverse program of works ranging from some of the earliest works for the genre by W.F.E. Bach (Bach’s grandson!) and Antonius Fodor to transcriptions by Czerny of The Marriage of Figaro, and original works by Cornelius Gurlitt, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and contemporary German composer Armin Fuchs.
The 2015-2016 Shepherd Music Salon Series closes on Thursday, March 10, 2016 with The Two Rivers Trio. Identical twin violinists Matthew and Michael Polonchak, and their father, Shepherd bassoon professor Richard Polonchak, have performed together since 1995. Originally based in Alexandria, Virginia, later in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and now in Baltimore, Maryland, the trio has performed concerts and recitals throughout the mid-Atlantic area and is in the process of recording their first CD. Their Salon Series program will include their own transcription of the Bach Double Violin Concerto, a Mozart Serenade and a Haydn London Trio along with Viennese waltzes, Joplin rags, The Beetles, Michael Jackson and Taylor Swift.
All of the Shepherd University Music Salon Series concerts take place in the W. H. Shipley Recital Hall of the Frank Arts Center and begin at 8:00 p.m. Open to the public, admission is free. If interested in corporate sponsorship or donations to help underwrite the Shepherd Music Salon Series or other Shepherd University Music programs please contact Dr. Rob Tudor at rtudor@shepherd.edu or 304-876-5237. For more information about the Shepherd Salon Series or other Music Department events call 304-876-5555 or visit www.shepherd.edu/music.