For the first time ever, the students, faculty and members of the Whitewater community will be able to hear the brand-new Steinway D concert grand piano in the Light Recital Hall.
The Piano Dedication Concert is part of the Music Mosaics faculty concert series. Each year, UW-Whitewater faculty members perform four to six concerts, which raise money for music student scholarships.
This will be the tenth year of the Mosaics series, Professor Benjamin Whitcomb, coordinator of the series, said.
“We had been looking for a way to increase the attendance at our concerts, but also increase scholarship money,” Whitcomb said. “We tried it as a series of mixed ensembles; getting all the faculty out there in different combinations–which is the idea of Mosaics, creating a mosaic.”
Whitcomb said in the past nine years, Music Mosaics has raised over $10,000 for scholarships.
The first concert of the year is in celebration of the new pianos the Music Department purchased for the Center of the Arts.
Piano faculty members Drs. Karen Boe and Myung Hee Chung flew out to New York last semester to choose the perfect Steinway piano to be the flagship in the Light Recital Hall.
They came to a unanimous decision as to which piano they thought to be the best.
Boe and Chung will be playing a number of pieces, but the highlight of the concert is going to be a transcription of the orchestra piece, “The Rite of Spring,” by Igor Stravinsky.
“It is really a monumental piece,” Chung said. “When it was first premiered, people really ‘booed’ because it was so avant-garde… but now in the 21st century it is in sync with our rhythm and very exciting.”
The music for “Rite of Spring” has been arranged for one piano, four hands. Chung said it is rare to see two people playing on one piano.
The department also purchased more than 30 new Steinway and Boston pianos for the practice rooms and rehearsal spaces.
Chung and Boe’s dedication concert will take place at 7:0 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 18 in the Light Recital Hall. There will be a reception before the concert beginning at 6:30 p.m.
General Admission ticket price is $7 and students with ID can purchase a ticket for $3 at the Greenhill Center Box Office located in the Center of the Arts.
