The UVA Department of Music presents Stravinisky's Petrushka on Saturday, February 21st at 8 pm in Old Cabell Hall. This event is sponsored by the UVA Arts Council: Enriching the Arts on Grounds. The concert is free and open to the public.
Petrushka is one of Stravinsky’s famous works. It can be performed as a ballet, a stand alone orchestral suite, and even as piano four-hands. All three versions were arranged and edited by Stravinsky. Compared to his orchestral version, there were a lot of melodic themes and color that were omitted in his piano four-hands version. Brian Smith and Peter White have made a new arrangement for 2 pianos and 2 percussions to adapt the color, texture, and melodies from the orchestral suite that were missing in the four-hands version. This version was premiered on August 17, 2024 at the Staunton Music Festival by Brian Smith, I-Jen Fang, Heini Kärkkäinen, and Carsten Schmidt.
I-Jen Fang remembers: "The performance of this new arrangement was a great success and many audience members from the Charlottesville-area were asking if we would ever bring the performance to Charlottesville, which gave me the idea to propose a duo/quartet concert for this instrumentation. This concert will be a collaboration between our piano faculty, John Mayhood, Shelby Sender and myself, plus the percussionist/arranger of The Rite of Spring, Brian Smith, a frequent performer with our music department. The proposed program will include several percussion duets in the first half of the concert and the entire Petrushka in the 2nd half. Brian and I are planning to premiere 2 newly commissioned duets. "Zone of Avoidance" for percussion duo with fixed electronics by Alexis Lamb and "Sejoli" for Two Vibraphones by Dewa Alit. This will be a concert to showcase the artistry of both our piano and percussion faculty."
BIOGRAPHY
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Described as an “intrepid percussionist” by Fanfare Magazine, I-Jen Fang has a career as a solo performer, chamber musician, orchestral player, and teacher. She joined the faculty of the Music Department at the University of Virginia in 2005 and serves as the Principal Timpanist and Percussionist of the Charlottesville Symphony. As a soloist, I-Jen has performed in Taiwan, U.S., Austria, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and South Africa. She was also the featured marimba soloist with the Charlottesville Symphony in 2006 and 2010. As a chamber musician, I-Jen has performed or recorded with artists such as Keiko Abe, Gregory Beyer, William Cahn, Christopher Deane, Mark Ford, Dave Hall, Edward Janning, Heini Kärkkäinen, Sivan Magen, Vladimir Mendelssohn, Jan Müller-Szeraws, Diane Pascal, Minna Pensola, Carsten Schmidt, Ed Smith, Nanik Wenton, Nyoman Wenton, EcoSono Ensemble, Cantata Profana, Attacca Percussion Group, DaCapo Chamber Players, Victory Hall Opera, and Charlottesville Opera. She has appeared in Staunton Music Festival, Wintergreen Festival, Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, Heritage Theater Festival, Greencastle Summer Music Festival (IN), DRUMFEST XXVIII (Poland), International Viola Congress, National Flute Association Convention, Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) Conference, Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC), and Regional PAS Day of Percussion. She is also a founding member, with Ayn Balija, of the Piedmont Duo, which explores the sonic possibilities of the viola and percussion. In 2024, the duo was invited to perform in Hungary and Brazil. An advocate of New Music, I-Jen was the director of the UVA New Music Ensemble for 14 years. The ensemble collaborated with composer/improviser George Lewis, flutist Claire Chase, and performed for composers such as Phillip Glass and Christian Wolff. She has also commissioned and/or premiered works by JoVia Armstrong, Jon Bellona, Matt Boehler, Becky Brown, Matthew Burtner, Cameron Church, Ted Coffey, Kevin Davis, Christopher Deane, Erik DeLuca, Aurie Hsu, André Mehmari, Sarah O’Halloran, Chris Peck, Leah Reid, Judith Shatin, Brian Simalchik, Ed Smith, D.J. Sparr, Max Tfirn, Zachary Wadsworth, Kristina Warren, and Michele Zaccagnini. A lover of Gamelan Music, I-Jen was a member of Makan Malam Gamelan Ensemble (TX) and Charlottesville Javanese Gamelan Ensemble (VA). Other than studying with Ed Smith in Texas, she also studied Gamelan Gender Wayang under the tutelage of I Ketut Madri in Bali. In 2005 and 2009, she was invited to perform at PASIC on the Gamelan Gender Wayang. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, I-Jen began her musical education at age six taking piano lessons. Taking up percussion at the age of nine, she came to the United States at age fifteen to pursue her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Percussion Performance at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her Master of Music degree from Northwestern University and her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of North Texas, where she served as a teaching fellow. I-Jen is an Innovative Percussion, Marimba One, and Sabian Cymbals artist.
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Pianist John Mayhood enjoys a busy performance schedule that in recent seasons has taken him across the North America and Europe in a wide variety of solo and collaborative settings and in repertoire that spans from the English virginalists to music of the present day. His concerts often explore the works of a single composer, combining solo piano and chamber music – he has dedicated complete evenings to the works of Poulenc, Hindemith, Feldman, and Schubert, and to new works by emerging composers. He has recently given world premieres of works by Matthew Burtner, Daniel Kessner, and James Sochinski, and the US premiere of Bruce Mather’s Doisy Daëne III. His performances are often featured on NPR, CBC, and SRC radio, and his recordings can be heard on Ravello Records and the EcoSono label. Also a scholar, he has presented work on ‘transformational theory’ and ‘theory and performance’ at the University of Chicago and at the annual meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie. His main interest is the philosophy of music, particularly meaning in abstract music and the philosophy of performance. John holds the Master of Music degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied with Ian Hobson; his other major teachers are Caio Pagano and Jean-Paul Sévilla. He has taught piano at the University of Illinois and philosophy at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. He currently resides in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is head of the piano faculty at the University of Virginia.
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Shelby Sender received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance at the University of Maryland in 2013. She is active as both a solo and collaborative pianist. She has performed at both the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Hungarian Ambassador's Residence. A faculty member of Crescendo, a classical music festival located in Tokaj, Hungary each summer, she is also a co-founder and the accompanist for Mosaic Children's Choir in Charlottesville. In March 2012, she performed in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall as a part of the Adamant School of Music's 70th Anniversary Concert. Shelby was featured in a 2011 festival at Ithaca College commemorating the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt's birth, and she recently gave world premieres of works by Walter Gieseking at the American Musicological Society's 2009 annual conference. She frequently works with the Charlottesville Opera as well as Victory Hall Opera and has appeared on multiple occasions with the Annapolis Chamber Players. She can be heard on a Centaur recording of unpublished works by Walter Gieseking, playing both solo and chamber music. In 2018, Dr. Sender was sent by the Sister Cities Commission to Pleven Bulgaria to represent Charlottesville in concert. She studied during the 2010/2011 academic year under Kálmán Dráfi at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. She gave performances in Bartók Hall at the Institute for Musicology and the Régi Zeneakadémia at the Franz Liszt Memorial House and Museum in Hungary, as well as the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Universität der Kunste in Berlin. Shelby received her Master of Music degree from the University of Maryland and her Bachelor of Music degree from Ithaca College. She is the co-founder for Mosaic Children's Choir, a group that incorporates movement, drama, dance, and performs in non-traditional spaces. She was the coordinator for the class piano program at the University of Maryland, where she also taught class piano and gave private lessons to piano minors. She currently maintains a private studio in Central Virginia and works as the choral and orchestral pianist at St. Anne's-Belfield in Charlottesville. Recent teachers include Bradford Gowen, Read Gainsford, and Jennifer Hayghe.
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Brian Smith is a musician and writer interested in exploring cultural practices, social forces, and technology through the medium of sound and musical performance. Praised for his feline-like grace as a percussionist, Brian delivers “committed and energetic” performances with a versatile repertoire that includes historical, contemporary, and experimental musical practices. His primary work as a contemporary percussionist incorporates many electro-acoustic and multimedia pieces. As a co-founder and member of the ensemble ScreenPlay, he pursues a deep interest in experimental musical practices and improvisation through audio-visual works that utilize animated notational schemes. Brian’s current “solo” project, Human+, combines his interest in technologically-mediated sonic arts with a fiendish advocacy for new works by living composers to develop a repertoire of duets for musical robotics and percussionist. As an orchestral percussionist, Brian has performed with ensembles throughout the U.S. and Europe, appearing in world-class concert halls including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Berlin Philharmonie. He plays period timpani and percussion with the Staunton Music Festival, and his ethnographic interests include West African drumming and dance from Ghana, Togo, and Benin. An experienced educator, Brian has taught at Houston's High School for the Performing and Visuals Arts, the University of Lynchburg, Randolph College, Stony Brook University, and Texas State University. He also served as a Teaching Artist with the nationally renowned ensemble, Tales & Scales, working in local schools and community centers as an artist-in-residence. Brian received Bachelor and Masters degrees from the University of Cincinnati College–Conservatory of Music and the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree at Stony Brook University. He currently lives in Central TX.
Old Cabell Hall is located on the south end of UVA's historic lawn, directly opposite the Rotunda. Parking is available in the central grounds parking garage on Emmet Street, in the C1 parking lot off McCormick Rd, and in the parking lots at the UVA Corner. Handicap parking is available in the small parking lot adjacent to Bryan Hall.
All events are subject to change.
For detailed information, please visit this page 4 weeks before the event. Sign up for the weekly UVA Music email, follow @uvamusic on social media or call the Department of Music at 434.924.3052 or write music@virginia.edu.
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