Phang performs at Gobin Music Festival

Monday, August 8, 2011

DePauw University piano professor May Phang will perform music by Mozart, Hummel, Chopin, Liszt and American composer Alan Jay Kernis Wednesday night in the next-to-last concert of the 2011 Greencastle Summer Music Festival.

The performance, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, is free and open to the public. This summer's festival will conclude next week with a performance by soprano Barbara Paré and pianist John Clodfelter on Aug. 17.

"It's a program of Classical Twists," Phang said, "comprising several favorite works by composers I love. I've juxtaposed similarly titled pieces by different composers. It's interesting to see what paths various composers, with similar stylistic aesthetics or from a completely different generation, take in creating music with supposedly the same titles, especially when there is, unlike vocal music, no text nor, for the most part, programmatic ideas involved."

Phang's performances have been audience favorites in past years of the festival.

"May is such an outstanding performer," festival director Eric Edberg, also a DePauw music professor, said. "Many of our regular audience members have told me how much they are looking forward to this concert. She has a big fan base in Greencastle."

Phang began piano studies in her native Singapore where she obtained diplomas from the Trinity College of Music (London) by age 12. A graduate of McGill University in Canada, she obtained her doctorate from Temple University in Philadelphia.

Currently associate professor of piano at DePauw University, her prior teaching positions include Carroll College in Waukesha, Wis., and the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee.

She has given numerous solo recitals and chamber music concerts in Singapore, Canada, the United States and Europe, performing in numerous venues and at festivals such as the Singapore Festival of Arts, the Montreal International Piano Festival and the Karol Szymanowski Festival in Poland.

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