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Greencastle Summer Music Festival continues Wednesday at Gobin
The Greencastle Summer Music Festival continues Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church as bass-baritone Andrew Richardson and pianist Tony Weinstein take the audience on a transformative emotional and spiritual odyssey, performing the 24 songs by Franz Schubert, known as the "Winterreise" (winter journey).
The concert is free, with donations accepted.
"Heartbroken. Lost. Wandering in the cold, dejected and hopeless. Don't we all feel that way at times?" asks Eric Edberg, a DePauw music professor and the founder/organizer of the festival. "Schubert selected texts by the great Romantic poet Wilhelm Müller. As we experience the gamut of emotions expressed by the 'wanderer,' who is the protagonist of the cycle, we'll each go on our own inner journeys, connecting deeply with our humanity, and being inspired to imagine how we can shape our futures."
The festival's theme is "friends making music for friends." Tony Weinstein, a DePauw music faculty member and director of the School of Music's accompanying center, has known Andrew Richardson, who graduated from DePauw in 2010, since Andrew's senior year, and recently performed many of these songs with Andrew on his Master's recital at the IU Jacobs School of Music.
"I'm always happy to present rising young artists like Andrew," Edberg says. "He's stepping in at the last minute to replace Cody Medina, who was asked to perform with the Houston Grand Opera. Andrew is a huge talent, with deep ties to DePauw and Greencastle."
Weinstein says that performing these songs, in which the piano portrays elements of the singer's emotional world, requires a powerful musical bond.
"The challenge for the performers is greater than simply being 'in concert,' although, given the staggering variety of textures and shifts of mood, this is no small task. The singer and pianist are to be one complex organism, as its mind experiences a range of emotions, often at odds with itself, and its body gradually gives in: thus, the performers must attain a level of understanding beyond affability and agreement, information and intimacy, concern and compromise - this, only true friends can have."
About the Performers
Andrew Richardson, bass baritone, is a doctoral student at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He is currently a student of Andreas Poulimenos. Richardson is a graduate of DePauw School of Music where he studied with Caroline Smith. Richardson has performed many roles on the opera stage including Colline in La Boheme, Ariodate in Xerses, and Wagner in Faust.
A fourth-generation musician who grew up in what is now Ukraine, pianist Tony Weinstein pursued a number of other interests when young, coming to "pre-professional" piano study significantly later than his heritage--the juggernaut that is the Russian musical tradition--would deem acceptable.
As a child, he sang in an award-winning choir with which he won prestigious competitions in Cantonigr--s (Catalonia) and Varna (Bulgaria) and performed in Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and all over the former USSR. Following his family's immigration to Cincinnati, he found his way, almost by accident, to the School for Creative and Performing Arts and gradually grew more serious about the piano under the guidance of Derison Duarte.
He went on to study piano performance (with Haewon Song and Sedmara Rutstein), as well as music history and pure mathematics at Oberlin College, where he graduated with Honors and completed a research project in commutative algebra.
Once having met Professor Luba Edlina-Dubinsky, at a summer chamber music program, he could not imagine continuing his studies anywhere but Indiana University.
Thus far, he has continued to evade a narrowly focused career, teaching piano and an array of other music subjects to students of widely varying ages and backgrounds. He is in demand as accompanist and vocal coach, with special emphasis on Russian lyric diction, and he performs in piano duo with his wife Karina Avanesian.
Having recently completed a project on the vocal works of Olivier Messiaen with soprano Sally Freeland, he is currently involved, along with his sister, mezzo-soprano Yana Weinstein, in a project of performances, translations, and IPA transcriptions of the songs of Nicolai Medtner. Tony is in his fourth year as director of the Accompanying Center at DePauw University, where he also teaches secondary piano and Advanced Keyboard skills, and serves as staff accompanist.
Concurrently, he is adjunct professor of piano at Vincennes University, as well as an instructor of piano and music theory in IU's Young Pianists Program. Prior to these appointments, he served as an associate instructor of piano and music theory and as coordinator of piano accompanying at Indiana University.