pro series concert on Tuesday, April 20, 2021 & Eklektikos Band in Concert on Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Tuesday, April 20 @ 7:30 p.m. pro series Concert

YouTube link:

https://youtu.be/14fHsrWIVTc

Or join with Facebook:

www.facebook.com/brandonumusic/live2

 

featuring Nancy Hennen, flute
and
Kerry DuWors, violin
Sarah Hall, voice
Paul Madryga, guitar
Megumi Masaki, piano
Catherine Wood, clarinet

The April 20, 2021 pro series concert will feature Nancy Hennen and performing artists from the School of Music to present works by Charles Koechlin, Jacques Ibert, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, Fraces Poulenc and Albert Roussel.

Flutist Nancy Hennen holds degrees in music from Mount Allison, McGill, and McMaster Universities. She has performed with Symphony Hamilton and the orchestras of Niagara, Windsor, and Thunder Bay. She is an active chamber musician, appearing with Musica Poetica, the Brandon Chamber Players, and the Clear Lake Chamber Music Festival in Manitoba, and New Music North and Consortium Aurora Borealis in Thunder Bay. Nancy is trained as a Suzuki Flute instructor, and has taught at the Great Lakes Flute Centre and Hillfield-Strathallan College as well as at Brock and Lakehead Universities. She has acted as a woodwind adjudicator for various festivals in Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Nancy performs on both modern and baroque flutes. Her influential teachers include Carolyn Christie, Louis Moyse, Claire Guimond, and Wilbert Hazelzet. She is currently the flute instructor at Brandon University, and an active clinician in southwestern Manitoba.

Praised by Gramophone Magazine for her “soaring cantilena” and “always finding the music behind the notes with fearless competence”, award-winning Canadian violinist Kerry DuWors performs across four continents. A versatile artist, DuWors collaborates across genres in an array of ensembles from her duo work to leading chamber orchestras. Memorable performances with James Ehnes, Yo-Yo Ma, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Measha Brueggergosman, Montreal’s collectif9 and New York’s The Knights. She has been soloist with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony, Saskatoon Symphony, Montreal Chamber Orchestra, and Manitoba Chamber Orchestra. DuWors’ most recent violin-piano album “Duo Fantasy” was released on Navona Records in May 2019 to rave reviews. She has won prestigious awards including Grand Prize at the 26th Eckhardt-Gramatté Competition, Felix Galimir Award for Chamber Music Excellence, University of Toronto Eaton Graduate Scholarship, and two Canada Council Career Development Grants. She is a four-time laureate of the Canada Council for the Arts’ Musical Instrument Bank. DuWors currently plays on a modern Felix Krafft violin modelled after the 1735 ‘Plowden’ Guarneri. Curiosity drives DuWors’ academic and musical study through creative projects, artist residencies (Banff Centre, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Indiana University), commissions, premières, masterclasses, and community outreach. Her mentors include Lorand Fenyves, Charles Castleman, Scott St. John, Jean Barr, and the Lafayette String Quartet. In 2018 she created the annual summer duo526 Sonata Seminar with pianist Futaba Niekawa. Committed to pedagogy and mentorship, DuWors has been Associate Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at Brandon University since 2003.

www.kerryduwors.com

As a soloist and chamber musician, Sarah Hall appears regularly with Polycoro, one of Canada’s premier chamber choirs, Canzona (Winnipeg’s Baroque choral ensemble), and the Brandon Chamber Players.  She has also sung internationally, at Il Festival dei Due Mondi (Spoleto, Italy), with The Cantata Singers and Ensemble (Boston), and The Bridge Ensemble (Philadelphia). Sarah has sung under the batons of such distinguished conductors as Tamara Brooks, Paolo Carignani, Henry Engbrecht, Janet Galvàn, John Harbison, David Hoose, Stephen Mercurio, Donald Nally, Alice Parker, Daniel Pinkham, and Constantina Tsolainou, to name a few. Recent solo appearances include Messiah with Canzona and the Winnipeg Symphony, Oleska Lozowchuk’s Waters of Rest with Polycoro at the Winnipeg New Music Festival, and the world premiere of Ken Nichols’ Letters from Home at the Clear Lake Chamber Music Festival. An Assistant Professor of Music at Brandon University, Sarah teaches voice, diction, vocal chamber music, and vocal pedagogy.  She holds Master’s Degrees in Vocal Pedagogy and Musicology from the New England Conservatory of Music (Boston), and a Bachelor’s Degree in Voice Performance from West Chester University of Pennsylvania.

Paul Madryga’s academic credentials include a Bachelor of Music degree from Brandon University and a Masters degree in Classical Guitar Performance from Brisbane, Australia’s Queensland Conservatorium. Some of Paul’s past performance highlights include two short periods of intensive study with American pedagogue Bruce Holzman, and masterclass sessions with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Leo Brouwer, Ricardo Cobo, Lily Afshar, the Sydney Guitar Trio, Denis Azabagic, the Z.O.O. Duo, Stephen Robinson, Kevin Gallagher, Daniel Bolshoy, and Australian composer Philip Houghton. In 2010, he released his second

Paul Madryga, solo CD, Tone Colour Paintbrush.

Megumi Masaki is a pianist, multimedia performance artist, educator and curator. She is recognized as a leading interpreter of Canadian and contemporary music and an innovator that reimagines the pianist, piano and performance space. Her work and collaborations push boundaries of interactivity between sound, image, text and movement in multimedia works through new technologies, including hand-gesture-motion tracking, AI, 3D visuals, keyboard-controlled computer game, e-textile sensors and active infra-red tracking. As a Japanese-Canadian artist, her work is connected deeply to community, acting on Truth and Reconciliation calls to action, and how human rights and environmental issues can be communicated through music to create narratives that speak truth to power. Forty-eight new works have been created with/for Megumi and she has premiered over 100 works worldwide. Megumi is a Full Professor of piano and director of the New Music Ensemble and Festival at Brandon University. She is a member of the interdisciplinary Noiseborder Ensemble and Slingshot-Kidõ, faculty at the Musiktage am Rhein Germany, Casalmaggiore International Festival Italy, Chetham’s International Summer School and Festival Manchester UK, and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She is regularly invited to give lectures and masterclasses at universities worldwide. Megumi is the Artistic Director of the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition.

www.megumimasaki.com

A complete bio for Catherine Wood, clarinetist, an be found at this link:

Catherine Wood

 

Wednesday, April 21, 2021 @ 7:30 p.m. — Eklektikos Band in Concert

Tune in Wednesday at 7:30 PM to check it out!

https://youtu.be/ne5ecFeOUsQ

The Eklektikos Band, directed by Diogo Peixoto, will stream their year-end concert on the Brandon University School of Music YouTube account this coming Wednesday, April 21st, at 7:30 PM. The Eklektikos Band is eclectic (get it?) in terms of both instrumentation and repertoire so it is sure to be a fun and exciting show! The performance will feature tunes composed by Charles Mingus, Snarky Puppy, and George Gershwin to name just a few, as well as two original compositions  BU’s own Dylan Pilcher!