252 STONES RIVER CHAMBER PLAYERS DELIVER FIRST 2008 PERFORMANCE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Jan. 29, 2008
CONTACT: Tim Musselman, (615) 898-2493

STONES RIVER CHAMBER PLAYERS DELIVER FIRST 2008 PERFORMANCE
Feb. 4 Concert Featuring Works by Composer Spohr is Free & Open to the Public

(MURFREESBORO)—The Stones River Chamber Players, ensemble in residence at MTSU, will present its third concert of the 2007-2008 season titled “From the Rhine to the Blue Danube” at 7:30 p.m. Feb 4 in T. Earl Hinton Music Hall of the Wright Music Building on the MTSU campus.
The concert will consist of four of Louis Spohr’s Six German Songs, Op. 103, which will be performed by Dina Cancryn (soprano), Todd Waldecker (clarinet) and Lynn Rice-See (piano), as well as Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 47 performed by Rice-See, Andrea Dawson (violin), Sarah Coté (viola) and Xiao-Fan Zhang (violoncello).
Rice-See, co-director of the SRCP, said Spohr, a Romantic contemporary of Schumann and Chopin, wrote the Six German Songs in a variety of styles.
"The first, Be Still, My Heart, is highly dramatic, while in the second song, Two Songs, the clarinet plays the part of a bird as the soprano outlines the tale of a young girl and a bird singing a duet in praise of spring," she explained.
"The third song is a tender lullaby, and the group will end with Wake Up!, which dances a graceful praise of all the qualities of springtime," she added.
The Schumannn quartet was composed in 1842. also known as the “chamber music year,” and Rice-See said his only two piano quartets were both composed and performed in the same venues as his string quartets, both of which demonstrate a greater interest in counterpoint.
"This can easily be heard in the two fugato sections of the last movement, but it is also evident in the delicate tendrils wound around the melody in the second half of the slow movement," she noted.
Regarding the performers, soprano Cancryn hails from Long Island and has sung leading roles at Rome Opera Festival, Nashville Opera and the Aspen Opera Theater. She was educated at the Eastman School of Music and Indiana University, respectively, and has written and produced a musical theater production, Portraits: the First Black American Divas of Song and Opera, in which she is currently appearing.
Waldecker, principal clarinetist of the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, was also educated at Indiana University as well as at Yale University and the University of Missouri. He is a member of the faculty of the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts and MTSU.
Rice-See holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Peabody Conservatory, a Master of Music from The Juilliard School and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Southern California. From 1989 to 2005, she was a member of the piano faculty at East Tennessee State University. She has also worked as an opera coach at the opera houses of Münster and Essen, Germany, as well as at Michigan Opera and Dayton Opera.
Dawson is a recent addition to the SRCP. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the U.S. and Mexico. Her principal teachers include Lynn Blakeslee, Camilla Wicks, Taras Gabora, Kathleen Winkler and Robert Koff.
Coté, another graduate of the Indiana University School of Music, has taught at MTSU, the Eastern Music Festival and the Indiana Young Violinists Program. She was a member of the San Antonio Symphony for 16 years.
Cellist Zhang received his early musical training in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenyang. He earned a master's degree in music performance from the University of South Carolina and went on to pursue a DMA at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He is currently a cellist with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information on this and other events in the MTSU School of Music, please visit www.mtsumusic.com or call 615-898-2493.



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