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Edberg-Cymerman concert Sunday to benefit summer festival, Food Pantry
The Greencastle Summer Music Festival presents a wintertime treat, a free concert featuring cellist Eric Edberg and pianist Claude Cymerman, followed by a dessert reception, at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 13 in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church.
Free-will financial donations will be accepted to benefit the festival. Audience members are also invited to bring a canned good (or multiple canned goods) which will be passed along to the Putnam County Emergency Food Pantry.
In the concert, Edberg and Cymerman will continue their 30-plus year collaboration with an approximately one-hour afternoon performance of musical treats, short Romantic-era "salon pieces" that were fashionable in house concerts during the late 19th and early 20th century. Composers include Bach, Elgar, Gounod, Rubenstein, Saint-Sa'ns and perhaps a more contemporary surprise or two.
The festival, which weekly summer concerts as part of its mission to "bring the community together with friends making music for friends" hopes to brighten up dreary winter days with an hour or so of musical warmth. Festival founding artistic director Eric Edberg says, "Claude and I realized there wasn't much music happening in Greencastle this month, and we have been enjoying playing these short romantic pieces, which are not only beautiful but also give us much opportunity for musical interplay. It will be an experience of warmth, elegance and romance."
Edberg is a classical and improvising cellist, organizer, teacher, coach, and consultant dedicated to using music and the creative process to bring people together in celebration of life and the power of the arts.
The founding artistic director of the Greencastle Summer Music Festival, which "brings the community together with friends making music for friends" through weekly free concerts, Eric has played in nursing homes, schools, and hospitals, participated in "Bach in the Subways Day" in New York, and organized the 2012 "Bach Everywhere Day," in which students and faculty of the DePauw University School of Music (where he is the cello professor) performed across the campus and city in celebration of the composer's birthday.
Edberg has played concertos, recitals, and chamber music concerts throughout the country, in Europe, and China. He has been the principal cellist of the Annapolis and Terre Haute symphony orchestras and performs regularly with the DePauw Chamber Players. He attended the North Carolina School of the Arts, Juilliard, Peabody, SUNY Stony Brook and Florida State. His teachers included Laura Sias, Nelson Cooke, Gary Hoffman, Marion Davies, Denis Brott, Channing Robbins, Leonard Rose, Bernard Greenhouse and Roger Drinkall. He had extensive coaching from violinist Berl Senofsky, and spent the fall semester of 2010 observing Janos Starker. He is a graduate of the Music for People Music and Leadership Program (improvisation techniques and facilitation) and has been trained in drum circle facilitation by Arthur Hull.
A native of France, Cymerman graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris with highest honors, studying with Pierre Sancan.
After winning National and International Competitions, including the Grand Prize at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud contest, he studied at Indiana University with Gyorgy Sebök.
The late French President Georges Pompidou, in a special ceremony, recognized him as "Outstanding Pianist". Cymerman performs extensively as a recitalist and chamber musician and has appeared as a soloist with the Radio France Orchestra, Orchestre des Pays de la Loire, Orchestre National d'Ile de France, Orchestre Symphonique de Limoges, the Luxembourg and San Francisco Chamber Orchestras, as well as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
He is regularly invited to perform and give master classes at major festivals in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Japan and Israel and is a frequent guest on French National Radio and the BBC.