UT Music Faculty to Perform Works By Higdon, Arensky Sept. 24

On Thursday, Sept. 24, The University of Tampa will present Chamber Music for Strings and Piano. The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Plant Hall’s Grand Salon and is free and open to the public.

Performers include Lei Liu, violin; Nancy Headlee, viola; Helga Winold, cello; Lowell Adams, cello; and Grigorios Zamparas, piano.

The program will include contemporary American composer Jennifer Higdon’s Piano Trio, which was commissioned in 2003 by the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Vail, CO. Color and visual imagery play heavily in Higdon’s compositional process. In Piano Trio, she attempts to match the mood of the music to the “mood” of pale yellow and fiery red.

Also on the program is Russian composer Anton Arensky’s String Quartet No. 2, Op. 35. Composed in 1895 and dedicated to the memory of fellow Russian composer Tchaikovsky, who died in 1893, the piece was written for the unusual quartet combination of violin, viola and two cellos.

Liu teaches violin and viola at UT and is assistant concert master for the Florida Orchestra. He was previously a member of the Florida Symphony Orchestra in Orlando and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

Headlee is the principal violist of the Central City Opera orchestra in Colorado and personnel manager for The Florida Orchestra. Previously, she was a member of the Honolulu Symphony and has served as principal violist of the Boulder Bach Festival, Denver Chamber Orchestra and Colorado Ballet.

Winold is a professor emeritus at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she taught private cello, cello literature, cello pedagogy and chamber music. Now retired, she maintains a busy schedule of private teaching, master classes, solo recitals and chamber music recitals. As a performer, Winold has played solo and chamber music recitals in many of the leading music centers of the United States, Europe and Asia.

Adams is an instructor of cello at UT, the assistant principal cellist for the Florida Orchestra and the principal cellist of the Lake George Opera in Saratoga Springs, NY. He was an artist-in-residence with the Esterhazy Quartet at the University of Missouri-Columbia and was a member of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra for the 1996-1997 season.

Zamparas is an associate professor of music and director of piano studies at UT. He is an active concert pianist and performs both as a soloist and in chamber music ensembles. He has given master classes around the world.

For more information, contact Zamparas at gzamparas@ut.edu or (813) 257-3376.