NOVEMBER 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LEXINGTON, VA -- The Columbia Trio begins the 2008-09 SonoKlect season with an evening of twentieth-century piano trios, on Saturday night, November 1st. The 8:00pm concert will include works by Dimitri Shostakovich, Astor Piazzolla and Washington and Lee’s Terry Vosbein. Tickets are free, but required. Call the Lenfest Box Office at 540.458.8000 for information. A reception will follow the performance.

Violinist Fritz Gearhart and cellist Andrew Kolb join SonoKlect mainstay David Riley for this exciting performance. The recently formed Oregon-based trio has been garnering praise in the Northwest and this is their first Eastern tour. During the trio’s residence in Lexington they will also coach WLU students in a masterclass.

The performance will feature two trios that Vosbein composed as a student at the Cleveland Institute of Music under the tutelage of the preeminent composer, Donald Erb. Sadly, Erb passed away in late summer. He participated in several SonoKlects since its inception and always left our community inspired. This concert is dedicated to his memory.

One of Argentina’s greatest gifts to the world musical stage was composer Astor Piazzolla. His music is full of the vitality of his homeland, yet always sounds contemporary and fresh. The trio will perform his Cuatro estaciónes porteñas, a collection of tangos evoking the four seasons in Buenos Aires.

The E minor Piano Trio of Dmitri Shostakovich is certainly one of the most popular pieces of chamber music ever written. It is a profound work of great emotional power, created in 1944 in response to the death of the composer’s closest friend. “It is impossible to express in words all the grief that engulfed me on hearing the news.” And so he expressed the grief in a manner befitting one of the greatest composers of his generation.


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