USU Symphony Orchestra Presents Concerto Evening

Six top student musicians in the department of music at Utah State University will perform Friday, March 30, as part of the department’s annual Concerto Evening. Performance time is 7:30 p.m. in the Kent Concert Hall of the Chase Fine Arts Center on campus.

Concert admission is $5 at the door, and USU students with current ID are admitted free.

 

The concert features student soloists who perform with the USU Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sergio Bernal. The soloists are winners of the 2006-07 concerto competition and include Kelly Astle, violin, Shane Bowles, piano, Michelle Broadbent, vocal performance, Kristi Geddes, violin, Brandon Lee, piano, and Jessica Roderer, piano.

 

“This is a group of exceptionally talented soloists, playing wonderful repertoire,” Bernal said.

 

The evening opens with a selection by the Symphony Orchestra, the prelude to Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

 

The work presents the orchestra’s abilities well, Bernal said.

 

“It is also a very appropriate piece for the occasion,” he said. “The opera is about a musical contest where participants display not only their ability to perform but their ingenuity and personality.”

 

Astle is featured in Saint-Saëns’s Third Violin Concerto. Astle has performed with the Rocky Mountain Strings locally, and in Chicago, Poland and the Czech Republic, and with the Rocky Mountain Camerata throughout Europe. She has competed and placed in several competitions, including the Utah State Fair Competition, Utah Symphony Youth Guild and the American String Teachers Association in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Missouri and Hawaii. She was a music Sterling Scholar finalist and served as concertmaster of the Young Artist Chamber Players. She studies violin with William Fedkenheuer, and previous teachers include Jack Ashton, Deborah Moench and Ramona Sterling.

 

Bowles will perform Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. He is a piano major at USU and studies with Gary Amano, with previous study from Jeff Manookian. He also studied with Endre Hegesus in the 2001 summer program at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, Hungary. His solo appearances include a performance of the Beethoven Third Piano Concerto with the Utah Valley Youth Orchestra in New York’s Carnegie Hall, and Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasy with the Utah Symphony in the 2000 “Salute to Youth” concert. Bowles was a quarter finalist at the 1999 Gina Bachauer Young Artist International Competition and received an Honorable Mention for his performance at the 2001 Jefferson Young Artist Piano Competition in Denver, Colo.

 

As a vocalist, Broadbent has performed internationally in Guatemala, El Salvador, Russia, England and Italy. For the concerto evening she will sing “Casta Biva” from Bellini’s opera Norma. Broadbent frequently performs leading roles in opera, musical theater and in recital at USU and in the community. She said her most exciting summers have been spent studying in Italy with the Oberlin Conservatory and with Daniel Ferro of the Juilliard School, serving as a performing missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo, Ill., and being a young artist in the Utah Festival Opera Company. A recent prestigious honor was her selection as a district finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Broadbent graduated from USU in December with a bachelor’s degree in vocal performance and choral education. She plans to pursue a graduate degree in vocal performance.

 

Geddes has played the violin for 14 years and is featured in Barber’s Violin Concerto. As a student in Ogden she studied with Peggy Wheelwright and is now a junior at USU after transferring from BYU-Idaho, where she studied with Ted Ashton. She enrolled at USU to study with Will Fedkenheuer and the members of the Fry Street Quartet. As a performer, she has appeared with the Utah Youth Symphony, the All State Orchestra and the BYU-Idaho Symphony and Chamber Orchestra. Geddes was a participant of the National Federation of Music Clubs music festival, where she received 12 consecutive superior performance awards and was a music Sterling Scholar Finalist for the state.

 

Lee will perform Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. He has studied piano for 15 years, and in 1998, his family moved from Hawaii so he could study with professor Gary Amano in Logan. Lee has won first place in more than 25 state, regional and national competitions, including the UMTA Concerto Competition, Utah State Fair competitions, Four Corners Piano Competition and MTNA Piano competitions. In 2004 he was named national winner of the MTNA National Yamaha Piano Competition in Kansas City, Mo., and later that year was awarded the Silver Medal at the Second New York Piano Competition hosted by the Stecher and Horowitz Foundation at the Manhattan School of Music. These awards led to several solo recitals in Washington, D.C., and New York. Lee has soloed with the Utah Symphony three times and with other orchestras in Colorado and California.

 

The piano is again in the spotlight with a performance by Roderer of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. Now 18, Roderer started playing the piano at age 3. She is a junior at USU and studies with Amano. She was a soloist with the Utah Symphony in 2004 at the Salute to Youth concert and has won a number of first place prizes, including the Utah State Fair in 2006, the UMTA 2005 Concerto Competition, the Music Teachers National Association at the state and division levels in 2002, 2003 and 2004. She is the recipient of the prestigious Sondra Rigby Scholarship for 2006-07. She comes from a musical family where each of her three siblings plays a different instrument. She said she enjoys teaching piano lessons, composing, reading and teaching Sunday school.

 

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Contact: Sergio Bernal (435) 797-0487