This week's musical offerings on campus feature a solo performance on the piano by a biology major and an appearance by a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer.
The music of one of America's most prominent contemporary composers, John Harbison, will be featured March 1 at 8:15 p.m. in Barnes Hall. The Cornell Contemporary Chamber Players will perform Harbison's Suite for solo cello, Motteti di Montale, Book III and The Rewaking for soprano and string quartet.
Harbison and Steven Stucky, professor and chair of the Cornell music department, will participate in a preconcert discussion at 7:30 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Harbison, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in music for The Flight Into Egypt. Harbison is at Cornell this weekend participating in the Creating Minds symposium sponsored by the Cornell Council for the Arts. His appearance is made possible by a grant from Meet The Composer, whose funding is provided with support from the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Pianist Sarah Jhung '98, a Cornell biology major from Seekonk, Mass., will be the featured soloist with the Cornell Symphony Orchestra in a performance Sunday, March 2, at 3 p.m. in Bailey Hall. Jhung will perform Bizet's Symphony in C Major and Saint-Saëns's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, op.22.
Jhung, who has played piano since the age of 4, has performed with the Greater Boston Youth Symphony, the Rhode Island Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and the Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra. She won top honors at the 1990 International Young Keyboard Artists Association Competition and the 1991 Stravinsky International Competition. She currently is studying with Xak Bjerken.
Bjerken's students get to perform in recital Monday, March 3, at 8:15 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Students participating in the recital are Robert Kleinberg, Josh Lekwa, Hiromi Ogawa, Noah DeGarmo, Emily Chang and Elaine Liu
Blaise Bryski will give a D.M.A. recital on the fortepiano Tuesday, March 4, at 8:15 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Bryski will perform music by Muzio Clementi. A candidate for a Doctor of Musical Arts degree, Bryski has performed at the Green Umbrella New Music series, the Nakamichi Baroque Festival and the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, and he was the artistic director for Cornell's 1995 Schubert Festival. He studies fortepiano and 18th-century performance practice with Malcolm Bilson, Cornell's Frederic J. Whiton Professor of Music.