The Morgantown Community Orchestra, conducted by Alejandro Pinz�n and made up of students in West Virginia University’s Community Music Program and Morgantown-area musicians, will present a chamber concert at the Creative Arts Center on Sunday, Oct. 21 featuring world-class harmonica virtuoso Jia-Yi He.
The concert begins at 5 p.m. in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (200A) and is free and open to the public.
The orchestra is for intermediate and advanced level players of all ages in the community and region who wish to share and develop their talents while enjoying music-making in a friendly orchestral setting.
“For this concert the full orchestra will not perform, but small ensembles and soloists from the orchestra will be featured instead,” Pinz�n said. “It’s going to be a night of chamber music, diverse repertoire and various ensembles. A string quartet made up of orchestra members will also accompany Mr. He for one of the selections.”
Mr. He has received numerous awards at international festivals and competitions in England, Germany, Israel, Japan and the United States. He is currently a harmonica teacher at the Turtle Bay Music School in NYC. He regularly performs recitals throughout Europe and Asia and has appeared on many television channels, recorded for movies and CDs and has performed at the General Assembly Hall of United Nations and a pre-game show at Shea Stadium for the New York Mets.
The orchestra’s string quintet and pianist Khe Sin Khoo will accompany Mr. He for half of the concert. Selections for the night will include compositions by W. A. Mozart, T. G. Febonio, Franz Liszt, Stephen Foster, and Rimsky-Korsakov, among others. Mr. He will perform on a variety of harmonicas, including the smallest harmonica in the world, a bass harmonica and several harmonicas at the same time. To see Mr. He performing on “America’s Got Talent,” visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRupAHogVJY.
Pinz�n is a young and versatile Mexican musician. He is also conductor of the String Studio and String Ensemble at Waynesburg University in Waynesburg, Pa., and is former choir director of the Coro Latinoamericano – Pittsburgh, with whom he presented several concerts and programs to share the music and cultures of Latin America in the Western Pennsylvania region. He is currently completing his doctorate in conducting in the WVU School of Music and is assistant conductor of the WVU Symphony Orchestra. His activities as a conductor include frequent performances both in M�xico and in the United States.
For more information about the orchestra or its upcoming concerts, see the website at http://music.wvu.edu/mco or call 304-293-4532. The Morgantown Community Orchestra is also on Facebook.
-WVU-
cl/10/17/12
CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu
Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.