Award-winning musicians, teachers, collaborators to be featured in Piano and Strings Festival March 7-8

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will host two special concerts during the Piano and Strings Festival March 7-8.

Duo Korusa will perform works by Antonín Dvořák, Erik Satie, and Carl Vine at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 7. In the second concert, the Albani Piano Trio and violist Dr. Timothy MacDuff will perform works by Richard Strauss and Camille Saint-Saëns at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 8. Both concerts are free and open to the public and will be held in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in the Fine Arts Building.

Duo Korusa is a versatile piano duet team dedicated to the performance of lesser-known works of the 19th and 20th century, as well as new works of the 21st century.

Duo Korusa will perform:

• Slavonic Dances, Op. 72 by Antonín Dvořák. Dvořák (1841-1904) was one of the first Czech composers to achieve worldwide recognition. Following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana, Dvořák frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia.
• 3 Morceaux en forme de Poire (Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear) by Erik Satie. Satie (1866-1925) was an influential French composer and pianist of the Parisian avant-garde.
• Sonata for Piano Four-Hands (1909) by Carl Vine. Vine (born 1954) is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music.

Award-winning pianists Dr. Jacob Clark and Dr. Sujung Cho perform together as Duo Korusa. The two have a keen interest in research and have presented lecture recitals at national and regional conferences of the College Music Society as well as at the National Group Piano and Piano Pedagogy Conference at Oberlin College and Conservatory. Clark currently serves as assistant professor of piano at Lamar University, specializing in applied and group instruction. Cho currently serves as instructor of collaborative piano at Lamar University.

The Albani Piano Trio is a UA Little Rock collaboration consisting of Dr. Meredith Maddox Hicks, visiting lecturer of violin and viola at UA Little Rock and violinist for the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s flagship Quapaw String Quartet, David Gerstein, principal cellist of the Arkansas Symphony and Quapaw String Quartet, and Dr. Naoki Hakutani, associate professor of piano at UA Little Rock. The Albani Piano Trio will perform with MacDuff, violist of the Quapaw String Quartet.

The Albani Piano Trio and MacDuff will perform:

• Cello Sonata in F major by Richard Strauss. Strauss (1864-1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist who is considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He composed the cello sonata when he was 19 years old and it quickly became a standard part of the cello repertoire.
• Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 41 by Camille Saint-Saëns. Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor, and pianist of the Romantic era.

For more information about performances and learning opportunities through the UA Little Rock Department of Music, contact Dr. Vicki Lind at vrlind@ualr.edu.