Student Success at NFMC Junior Festival

On Saturday, February 26, fifteen young piano students from the Maryland Conservatory of Music participated in the Maryland division of the National Federation of Music Clubs (NFMC) Junior Festival at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  The festival is a musical event held in all 50 states, involving thousands of pre-college musicians nationwide.  Students are grouped into categories based on the difficulty of their chosen musical selections.  Each student plays two selections by memory in front of a public audience and receives a written critique and a rating from professional musicians.  The ratings are Superior, Excellent, Satisfactory, Fair, and Needs Improvement.


All fifteen students study with pianist Elizabeth Borowsky at the Maryland Conservatory of Music.  A professional concert pianist, Ms. Borowsky has traveled to over 35 countries performing in venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, and directs the annual International Music Institute and Festival USA in Emmitsburg, Maryland.  She has been on the Faculty of the Maryland Conservatory of Music since 2009, and enjoys sharing her love of music with her students.  Under her guidance, all of the participating students from the Conservatory achieved a rating of “Superior” or “Excellent.”


This festival was a wonderful opportunity for students to grow and learn in their music through diligent practice towards the festival, showcase their talents in front of an appreciative audience, and benefit from the advice of professional musicians. The students, parents, and community can be very proud of their achievements.


(Names omitted from this online blog due to privacy)

14 Pieces for Flute/Sax/Clarinet/Trumpet

Imagine Music Publishing has published a collection of 14 pieces for winds and piano written that I wrote in collaboration with friend and former Towson University Music Chairman Dr. David Marchand. The pieces are written for young musicians and are scored for flute, saxophone, clarinet, or trumpet and piano. Dr. Marchand wrote the melodies, I created the accompaniments. 

Click here for music. Samples available on individual instrument pages.

Life: An Impromptu (part I)

Last week I was interviewed for the nationally syndicated radio show "The Story" regarding my work with Dick Smith, a 95-year-old resident of Oak Crest Village (Parkville, MD). Mr Smith was inspired to write a piece of music after attending a performance by Rachmaninoff in 1931. He spent decades piecing his musical ideas together (he never took lessons, and didn't own a piano until age 60), and asked me to help him prepare the work as a concert piece. 

I was thrilled to premiere Life: An Impromptu on August 29, 2010 at Oak Crest in a special concert dedicated to Mr. Smith. His family was there - as well as an audience of over 300 OCV residents - and it was a highlight of the year for me (and of my musical career!). The story received some local attention (Channel 11 News, Baltimore Sun, Erickson Tribune).

One week left in Dilsberg

COLLECTIVE COMPOSING
Emmanuel, Frances, and I wrote our first-ever joint composition. It's called "Postcards from Dilsberg," is about 14 minutes long, and is in my humble opinion pretty awesome! The work process was tedious, trying to improvise collectively, and streamline our differing ideas into one cohesive whole... but the end result is something we're all proud of. We premiered the piece at our concert here on July 6 (see below). We were working on it until the day of the performance. The piece consists of five movements:

I. Morning in Dilsberg:
The Neckar River winds around Dilsberg. The birds sing. The sun shines.
II. Ready for Battle.
III. The Legendary Sleeping Chamber.
IV. Rose of Dilsberg.
V. Triumphal March (In Honor of Dilsberg’s 800th Anniversary)

PERU BENEFIT CONCERT:
Early on during our stay in Dilsberg, my Dad went for an early morning walk and met a man tending the bee hive. My Dad asked if he could buy honey from him, and the man asked him to come by his house later on that day. We went with my Dad, met the man, his wife, and their dog, and started talking about their experience living in Dilsberg, what we are doing here, etc. We found out that they are very active in the Catholic Church, and that the lady is the head of a committee in charge of a sister-church relationship with a church in Peru, and that they occasional try to rasie funds for their Peruvian sister-church. We offered to play a benefit concert, and so the planning started... Posters were printed and posted around the area, invitations were sent out, the media was alerted... and we practiced, of course! The concert took place this past Sunday, July 6 and was a great success. The church was packed (standing room only!), the program was very well received (consisted of works ranging from peaceful favorites such as Ave Maria, Ave Verum, and Meditation from Thais to virtuoso works such as Ravel's Jeux d'Eau, Sarasate's Zigeunderweisen, and Popper's Hungarian Rhapsody, and THE PREMEIRE of our composition, "Postcards from Dilsberg," which received a standing ovation). After the concert, we received a special surprise (more like a shock) when renowned conductor Maestro Mario Venzago came to congratulate us! Yikes! We were glad we didn't know that he was in the audience prior to the performance... Afterwards we enjoyed a reception during which the local historic dance troupe performed several dances for us.

CONCERT FOR OUR OMA
We visited our Oma and celebrated her 89th birthday! She was in good spirits and sang many German folk songs with my Dad. The day after her birthday, we performed a concert in the Repelen Evangelical Church, very close to where my Oma lives.

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