Bassoonist Peter Kolkay, a member of the West Virginia University music faculty, will present a recital of contemporary music for the bassoon at the Creative Arts Center Thursday, Jan. 29. The free event begins at 8:15 p.m. in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (200A).

The program includesPress Release,written in 1992 for solo bassoon by David Lang, andBassoon Concertowritten by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1992 for the Pittsburgh Symphony. Zwilich was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in music. On this piece, Kolkay will be assisted by WVU music students Pei Sien Lim, piano, and Shawn Roberts, percussion.

Au Quai, written in 2002 for bassoon and viola by Elliott Carter, will also feature WVU music faculty member Harold Levin on viola.

The program ends withWounded Trees,composed in 2001 for two bassoons and computer-generated sound by Beth Wiemann, a professor of composition and clarinet at the University of Maine. For this presentation, Kolkay will be assisted by music doctoral student Alicia Whitney on bassoon.

Shortly before joining the WVU music faculty in 2002, Kolkay became the first solo bassoonist to win first prize at the Concert Artists Guild Competition in New York. A native of Naperville, Ill., he is a graduate of Yale University and holds a masters degree from the Eastman School of Music and a bachelors from Lawrence University. He has been a featured soloist with the Flint Symphony, the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra, the Musica Nova Ensemble at Eastman, and the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra.

Kolkay is an avid performer of contemporary music and appeared at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall in a performance of Elliott CartersQuintet for Piano and Winds.He also recorded CartersAu quaifor Bridge Records and premiered CartersRetracingfor solo bassoon in December 2002. He is currently a member of the Harrisburg Symphony and is a founding member of Trio Encantar, an oboe/bassoon/piano ensemble.

For more information, contact the College of Creative Arts at (304) 293-4841 ext. 3108.