[468] ‘Steinway Artist’ Heather Conner plans free public concert April 1 at MTSU

MURFREESBORO — “Steinway Artist” Heather Conner will present a free public piano concert at 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 1, in Hinton Music Hall inside MTSU's Wright Music Building.

Conner, who is a professor of piano at the University of Utah, will perform works by Frédéric Chopin, including “Nocturne in B Major,” “Barcarolle in F-Sharp Major” and “Étude in C-Sharp Minor,” along with Franz Schubert’s “Sonata in C Minor” and Samuel Barber’s “Souvenirs for Piano Four-Hands, Ballet Suite.”

She’ll be joined on the Barber piece by pianist Caleb Harris, a professor of music at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

MTSU’s School of Music became one of only 140-plus “All-Steinway Schools” in the world — and the first in Tennessee — in 2002, boasting 60 of the renowned instruments for student, faculty and guest performer use in its performance spaces, teaching studios and music classrooms.

“Steinway Artists,” who perform exclusively on Steinway pianos, come from every musical genre. Along with Conner, they include more than 1,600 esteemed artists like The 5 Browns, Judy Collins, Harry Connick Jr., Billy Joel, Evengy Kissin, Diana Krall, Lang Lang and Jason Moran and the late Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Vladimir Horowitz and Cole Porter.

Conner holds degrees in piano performance from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Yale University and the Manhattan School of Music. As a Steinway artist she has presented solo recitals in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Moscow, Salzburg, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Salt Lake City and more. She has won first prize at several international and national competitions, including the Hilton Head Island International Piano Competition and the Kingsville International Young Performers Competition, and has performed on numerous occasions as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Most recently, Conner performed a solo recital at the Zwischen den Jahren festival in Antweiler, Germany. In 2006, she appeared as recitalist and artist teacher at several venues in Seoul, South Korea. 

Conner has recorded commercially for the Naxos and Centaur labels and has been heard on NPR’s “Performance Today” as well as other radio shows.

For details on more MTSU School of Music performances, call 615-898-2493 or visit http://www.mtsumusic.com and click on the "Concert Calendar" link.