Monthly Archives: March 2017
Download the Spring Concerts Poster
Download the Spring Concerts poster.
PDF file (1.2 MB)
Artwork by Susan Dunn
x
New Music Guild, Inc. Features Violinist/Violist, Wanda Sobieska
The New Music Guild, Incorporated’s third concert set of the season will take place at 7pm Saturday, March 11, 2017 at the First Congregational Church of Jefferson, Ohio (an attractive small red brick church, built 1828), and at 5pm Sunday, March 12, 2017 at Saints Peter and Paul Church, Holy Apostles Parish, 421 Covington Street in downtown Youngstown. If you take Lincoln Ave west from 5th Ave on the YSU Campus, it intersects Covington Street after about half a mile. The brown brick Art Nouveau church has a steeple and will be on your right; it is a beautiful acoustic space.
The free admission events will feature violinist/violist, Wanda Sobieska, assisted by Cleveland area violinist/violist, Jamie Thornburg, and pianist and New Music Guild Coordinator, Robert Rollin. Both churches will sponsor special receptions with refreshments in honor of Sobieska.
Wanda Sobieska
Born in Warsaw, Poland, Sobieska belongs to the fifth generation of a family of musicians and musicologists. She has appeared as solo and chamber musician in the United States, Poland, and Canada, performing for such organizations as the Chagrin Valley Chamber Concerts, the Willoughby Performing Arts Center, the New Music Guild, Inc. Festival, Opera Circle, the Toronto Cultural Center, the Warsaw Institute of Fine Arts, and the Shrine of St. Stanislaus.
In addition, she regularly plays in many professional orchestras, including the Opera Circle Orchestra, the Ashland, Mansfield, Youngstown, and West Virginia Symphonies. She began studying violin ay the age of five, and attended the Grazyna Bacewicz School of Music in Warsaw, the Cleveland Music School Settlement and the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, where she earned her Bachelor’s in Violin Performance summa cum laude.
Sobieska is also a gifted arranger and has studied composition for many years. Recent arranging engagements include commissions by the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and the English Symphony Orchestra. In 2009 she launched www.freegigmusic.com, a website dedicated to making much-needed sheet music available to working musicians. Featuring her own practical arrangements of commonly requested pieces available for free while adhering to standards of high quality, the site currently serves over 1000 visitors a day worldwide.
Website:
www.wandasobieska.com
Concerts
Sobieska will perform the world premiere of Robert Rollin’s Adam’s and Aidan’s Reverie (2017) with the composer at the piano. Adam, the composer’s son-in-law; and Aidan, the composer’s grandson inspired the composition.
Violinist Gwyneth Rollin will begin the concert with Robert Rollin’s Two Songs about the Rebbi, accompanied by the composer at the piano. The lyrical first song praises the Rebbi for his supernatural powers, while the lively second, his ability to dance.
Sobieska will play Petro Mascagni’s gypsy Violin Solo from his opera, L’amico Fritz.
She will also perform Rollin’s Variations for Solo Viola, a complex composition employing 12-tone technique.
Sobieska and Thornburg will present Hungarian composer Bela Bartok’s charming Five Duos for Two Violins: including Pillow Dance, Ruthenian Song, Pizzicato, Slovakian Folk Song, and Ruthenian Dance. They will also play Rollin’s Three English Duos. These include Greensleeves Variations on the famous folk song; The Ravens, on a 16th Century courtly love long; and The Keeper in Summer, a piece that combines the 14th-century round, Summer is a Cummin In with The Keeper, another courtly song about a reluctant hunter.
Sobieska, Thornburg, and Rollin will perform Three Children’s Songs by Witold Lutoslawski, entitled Little Gregory is Walking, Kitten, and Dance. The new version, arranged by Sobieska, will be for two violins and piano.
New Music Society 