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DePauw Chamber Players in free concert Wednesday at Gobin
One week after its full-house opening concert, the free "friends making music with and for friends" Greencastle Summer Music Festival at Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church continues Wednesday night with an informal performance by the DePauw Chamber Players.
Pianist May Phang, violinist Dan Rizner and cellist Eric Edberg (all School of Music faculty members) will join together to play music by Haydn and Tchaikovsky. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m.
The festival presents free concerts every Wednesday through Aug. 15, including a pre-fireworks event on July 4 with a sing-along of American folk and patriotic songs.
"The performing arts in Putnam County, including our Wednesday summer concerts at Gobin, the wonderful Parkfest concerts on Tuesday nights, and the great shows at the Putnam County Playhouse, are not just about hearing particular pieces or groups or seeing a play. They are important ways we come together as a community," said Edberg, the festival founder and organizer.
"This past spring, Joe Schwanter, our guest composer for the Music of the 21st Century festival at DePauw, kept reminding us that for musicians, 'the best way to spend your life is making music with your friends.' That really clicked for me, because it is so true. What we do on Wednesday nights at Gobin is to have friends making music with friends, for our friends, new and old. As I see it, it's a big music party, a great time to connect with friends, old and new."
Since classical music is usually performed on stages in formal concerts, many people don't realize that small-ensemble works such as those played Wednesday were written to be played in informal, intimate settings. Haydn essentially invented what we now call the piano trio --piano, violin and cello. Those works were written to be played at gatherings in the home of his employer, the Esterhazy family, often with members of the family playing. Tchaikovsky's trio was dedicated it to "the memory of a great artist," his mentor Nikolai Rubenstien, and first played in private performances.
Phang has performed on three continents, including solo recitals and chamber music concerts in venues such as the Goethe Institute and Victoria Concert Hall (Singapore), Chapelle historique du Bon Pasteur and Place-des-Arts (Montreal), the Concertgebouw (Netherlands), and the Kennedy Center for the Arts, the National Gallery, and the Chicago Cultural Center in the U.S.
Rizner received a Bachelor of Music degree from Michigan State University and a Master of Music degree from Yale University. Rizner is a former concertmaster of the Lansing Orchestra and a regular performer at the Grand Teton Music Festival where he has participated in recitals with Lionel Party, Joseph Robinson, David Shifrin and Julie Bogorad. He has performed in the master classes of Franco Gulli, Szymon Goldberg and Dorothy DeLay and has received chamber music coaching from Michael Tree, Adlo Parisot, Raphael Hillyer and Koichiro Harada.
Cellist Edberg has performed throughout the U.S., in France, Italy and China. An improvising musician, he performs regularly as a member of the DePauw Chamber Players, as well as with the International Street Cannibals, an avant-garde, multi-disciplinary New York City performance art collective. At DePauw he teaches cello, chamber music, and courses in entrepreneurship, concert presentation, and improvisation.
The free Gobin festival continues next week with a performance by Duo Amabile, the husband-and-wife team of pianist Katya Kramer-Lapin and violinist Matvey Lapin.