Multi-media concert celebrates end of winter at DePauw

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Bass-baritone Stanley Irwin and pianist Natalia Rachford will present a multi-media concert celebrating the end of winter and beckoning of spring this Sunday evening at 7:30 p.m. in Thompson Hall of the Green Center for the Performing Arts.

The program features Franz Schubert's famous song cycle, "Winter's Journey," a cycle of songs on the theme of love. It will be sung in German and accompanied by photo images of winter scenes assembled and realized by Brooke Cox of the Peeler Arts Center.

A professor of music in the School of Music, Irwin has performed with critical and public acclaim at major venues in New York, London, Vienna, Prague and Zurich, as well as on PBS, NPR and WQXR in New York.

As a winner of the World Wide Voice Competition in New York in 1987, he performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Avery Fisher Hall and made his 1988 British debut in the Brahms Requiem with The Philharmonic Orchestra at Barbican Hall in London.

Irwin has also appeared at the Zurich Opera, Carnegie hall, and in concerts with The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and The Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra.

Russian born pianist and staff accompanist Natalia Rachford studied piano under Vera Klyachko, student of the famous Russian pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky, a friend of the composer Alexander Scriabin.

She studied at the Moscow Conservatory and has been an award winner in several competitions, including the Bartok-Kabalevsky International Piano Competition and the All-Russian Instrumentalist Competition in Leningrad.

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