Pianist Grace Fong and cellist Benjamin Truchi are the guest artists at this quarter’s Shpachenko & Friends Chamber Music Festival, performing works by Schumann and Brahms.
The festival performance will take place at 8 p.m.,Wednesday, Feb. 13, in the Music Recital Hall.
Fong is a prize-winning pianist with an international career as a concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and contemporary keyboardist. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, Phillips Collection, the Great Hall in Leeds, the United Kingdom, and the Konzerthaus in Dortmund, Germany. She is currently the director of keyboard studies at Chapman University Conservatory of Music.
“I first met Grace Fong in the ’90s, when we both entered the piano studio of the legendary professor John Perry at USC,” says Nadia Shpachenko, an associate professor of music at Cal Poly Pomona and the festival’s namesake. “Dr. Fong is now an internationally acclaimed concert pianist and professor with a busy schedule of performances in major venues and with major orchestras worldwide. I am very excited about our upcoming collaboration, performing 16 Waltzes by Brahms.”
Fong will also present a free piano master class at noon that day.
A French cellist, Truchi has performed in France, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, Israel, Belgium and the United States. He graduated at the top of his class at the prestigious National Conservatory of Music in Paris with a unanimous first prize in cello. Truchi was the Grand Prize and Public Prize winner of the 2012 Brahms International Competition in Austria, the winner of the 2011 Schlern International Music Festival Competition in Italy, and the top prize winner of the 2011 Eilat International Music Festival in Israel.
Tickets to the festival performance are $15 for general admission and $10 for students. They are available at csupomona.tix.com or through the music department’s publicity office, (909) 869-3554. For more information, visit the festival’s Facebook page.