CANCELED… Due to inclement weather, TCU is closed for Thursday, March 5, and all events and activities have been canceled.

Watch and hear the Longhorn Cellos live tonight on YouTube!

Tonight, during the opening concert of the 2015 TCU Cellofest, Professor Tsang, with students James Burch (DMA ’16), David Campbell (DMA ’15) and Ying Zhang (DMA ’15), gives the world premiere performance of a new arrangement of Ástor Piazzolla’s Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) for four cellos. The arrangement was made by student Matthew Armbruster (MM ’16) and is based upon Leonid Desyatnikov’s version for solo violin and chamber orchestra.

For ticket, venue or more information, visit www.cello.tcu.edu, or watch the live stream on YouTube at www.youtube.com.

More info…

Chloe Hyojung Jang (MM ’15) has been chosen as one of the finalists of the Lewisville Lake Symphony International Competition for Strings. Chloe will perform the Lalo Cello Concerto in D minor during the Final Round, which will take place on Saturday, March 14 in Denton, TX on the UNT campus.

The competition is open to all string players enrolled at an accredited university, college or conservatory between the ages of 18 and 30. The winner will perform with the Lewisville Lake Symphony Orchestra at the opening concert of the 2015-16 Season in September 2015.

For more information, visit http://www.lewisvillesymphony.org.

The Longhorn Cellos are back on American Public Media’s Performance Today!

Heard today during the second hour of the broadcast is the Longhorn Cellos’ performance of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 for Soprano and Cello Ensemble with soprano Mela Dailey and conductor Peter Bay. The recording was made during a concert in Bates Recital Hall in Austin, TX on Friday, September 14, 2012.

APM’s Performance Today is America’s most popular classical music radio program and a winner of the 2014 Gabriel Award for artistic achievement. The show is broadcast on 293 public radio stations across the country, and reaches approximately 1.4 million listeners each week. To find out where and when Performance Today is broadcast in your area, visit performancetoday.publicradio.org.

More info…

Doug Machiz (MM ’11) and his Friction Quartet will be performing in “String Quartet Smackdown 2” as part of Graham Reynolds’ Golden Hornet Project at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar on Saturday, January 24, 2015. The quartet will also appear on the UT campus in Jessen Auditorium the evening prior on Friday, January 23, 2015.

Golden Hornet Project is an Austin-based presenting and commissioning organization founded by composer/musician/bandleaders Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski. Since 1999 GHP has premiered over 60 new alt-classical works by more than 50 composers rooted in wildly different musical backgrounds. In 1999 the alt-classical movement barely existed. In 2014 it is thriving in cities around the world. Golden Hornet Project continues to be a vital member and leader of that global community and their commissions and productions strive to synchronize the rock club and the concert hall.

For venue, ticket and more information about the two events visit
goldenhornetproject.tumblr.com and music.utexas.edu.

About the Friction Quartet…

Today, Diana Burgess (BM ’15), as member of the orchestral indie band Mother Falcon, begins an eight-city Northeast US tour at the Rock & Roll Hotel in Washington, DC. The tour continues through New York, NY (Littlefield and Joe’s Pub), Providence, RI (Columbus Theatre), Philadelphia, PA (World Cafe Live), Baltimore, MD (Creative Alliance), Raleigh, NC (Kings) and ends in Birmingham, AL (Bottletree Cafe). For individual dates, venue, ticket and other information, visit motherfalcon.com.

SXSW profile of Mother Falcon…

For his final DMA lecture-recital on December 1, 2014, at the Butler School of Music, Jun Seo (MM ’11, DMA ’14) composed and performed a original set of Theme and Variations for Solo Cello. About his new composition, Jun writes:

“I wrote this theme and variations for solo cello to use it as a pedagogical tool. In order to aid future cellists with their technical study, this theme and variations guides a player’s technique from the basic skill of sound production through advanced techniques such as string crossings, chords, octaves, pizzicato, clear bow articulation, ponticello and artificial harmonics. The concept of the theme and variation form is to build upon one simple idea or melody in an improvisational manner. For inspiration, I studied several theme and variations of Beethoven, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Martinu and Paganini.”

The sheet music to Jun’s Theme and Variations for Solo Cello is available for download here.

On Friday and Saturday, December 12-13, Ying Zhang (DMA ’15) performs with the Conspirare Youth Choirs in their winter production The Heavens Unfastened. Other guest artists include UT Butler School of Music professors Thomas Burritt (percussion) and Delaine Leonard Fedson (harp).

Conspirare Youth Choirs (CYC) were formed in 2005 as an outreach program of the five-time Grammy®-nominated ensemble Conspirare. CYC seek and train young musicians who share a love and commitment for creating music at a high level of excellence.

For ticket, venue and more information, visit conspirare.org.

Daniel Smith (DMA ’15) has been chosen as a winner of the 2014 UT Symphony Orchestra String Concerto Competition. He will perform the Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, with conductor Gerhardt Zimmermann and the UTSO on Monday, May 4, 2015, in Bates Recital Hall. For venue, ticket and more information, visit music.utexas.edu.

For his final DMA lecture-recital at the Butler School of Music, Yi Xin (DMA ’14) will present the first performance of Augusta Read Thomas’s Cello Concerto No. 3: Legend of the Pheonix in cello and piano reduction form. The concerto was originally premiered by cellist Lynn Harrell, conductor Christoph Eschenbach and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March 2013.

About Legend of the Pheonix, Augusta Read Thomas writes:

“One might describe Legend of the Phoenix as ‘Scenes with Arias’ with the solo cello as a singing storyteller. Shaped in one long-reaching, continuous arch, the energy flow is often activated by the soloist, who is at the “philosophic center,” beckoning, caressing, and summoning the music’s chain of outgrowths.

“With sparkling, radiant, and capriciously witty atmospheres that celebrate the soloist and orchestra, this concerto is optimistic, clean, colorful, bright, sunny. There exists a wide and spontaneous variety of characters, including: triumphant, in-flight, ever-renewing of energy, graceful, majestic, spacious, pure and clean, playful, spry, jazzy, lively, rhythmic, ever-rising, resonant, and elegantly vibrant.”

Yi’s lecture-recital will take place on Wednesday, December 3, 2014, at 6 PM, in MRH 2.614. Admission is free.

More info…