The quarterly Shpachenko and Friends Chamber Music Festival will feature the world premiere of a piece written for two pianos and percussion and works by Schumann, Bartok, Szymanowski, Milhaud, and Lutoslawski.
Music Professor Nadia Shpachenko-Gottesman will perform with special guest artists Martin Chalifour and Kevin Fitz-Gerald at the concert, which will be held at 8 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 6, at the Music Recital Hall.
Fitz-Gerald is a touring concert pianist, professor of piano performance and collaborative arts at the University of Southern California and one of Shpachenko’s former chamber music instructors. He will put on a free piano master class on Thursday, Nov. 7, at the recital hall.
Chalifour is a violinist and principal concertmaster for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and a professor at USC’s Thornton School of Music. He is a former associate concertmaster of the Cleveland and Atlanta symphony orchestras and previously a faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
The featured performance is the world premiere of “Bounce,” a piece by composer Adam Schoenberg. An orchestral version of the piece recently premiered in Aspen and the Hollywood Bowl. Tickets are $15 for general admission, $10 for students and $7 with a student subscription. Tickets are available online at https://www.csupomona.tix.com or at the Music Department Box Office, Building 24, Room 188.
The festival also will highlight Cal Poly Pomona’s All-Steinway School Initiative, which aims to ensure that students perform and are taught exclusively on Steinway pianos. The instruments are considered by some musicians to be the gold standard for pianos, and less than 160 conservatories, universities and schools of music have achieved All-Steinway status.
“Being an All-Steinway School will enhance our ability to recruit talented students in music and further enhance the university’s ability to attract students in other majors who have a musical background,” says Professor Iris Levine, the music department chair.
Cal Poly Pomona, which is raising $2.5 million to purchase 29 Steinway pianos and establish an endowment for their maintenance, would become the first campus in the Cal State and University of California systems to achieve that distinction.
For more information on the All-Steinway School Initiative please visit https://www.cpp.edu/~steinway/.
(Photo: Nadia Shpachenko.)