Valentine's Day is jazzed up Friday; all-Szymanowski concert is Sunday

What could be better than hearing My Funny Valentine by Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter's What Is This Thing Called Love on Valentine's Day in Barnes Hall? Hear these tunes and more Feb. 14, when Cornell jazz instructors Paul Merrill (trumpet), Joe Salzano (alto sax), Bob Keefe (guitar), Molly MacMillan (piano), Peter Chwazic (bass) and James Armstrong (drums) come together as a sextet to present an evening of jazz standards centered around cupid's favorite holiday. The program, which is free and open to the public, will include three original pieces by Salzano and one by Merrill, and more standards, such as Rodgers and Hart's My Romance, My One and Only Love by Robert Mellin and Guy Wood, Erroll Garner and Johnny Burke's Misty, and Over the Rainbow by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg.

A trumpeter, composer and educator, Merrill is the Herbert Gussman Director of Jazz Ensembles at Cornell and lecturer and director of the Monday Jazz Lab at the Ithaca College School of Music.

On Sunday, Feb. 16, at 3 p.m. in Barnes Hall, the music department welcomes violinist Blanka Bednarz and pianist Matthew Bengtson for a program of music by Karol Szymanowski.

The duo met while they were working on their doctoral dissertations, Bednarz at New England Conservatory and Bengtson at Peabody Conservatory; both were researching the music of Szymanowski. Born in 1882 in the Ukraine, Szymanowski pursued musical studies at the Warsaw Conservatory but found Poland's musical culture too provincial, academic and old-fashioned. He and some other like-minded young composers formed "Young Poland in Music," an organization designed to promote new Polish music. By 1911, his most important early works, such as the Piano Etudes, op. 4, the Second Piano Sonata and the Second Symphony had earned him international recognition and a publishing contract with Universal.

World War I was a clear dividing point in Szymanowski's life, career and compositional style; having become exhausted of Germanic influences, he was revitalized by the new sounds of Stravinsky and French Impressionism. The third period of Szymanowski's life is characterized by a new spirit of patriotism after the reunification of Poland. For this "Karol Szymanowski Festival" performance, Bengtson will play three of the opus 4 Etudes, four Mazurkas and Masques, op. 34. Bengtson is joined by Bednarz for the following works for violin and piano: Romance, op. 23; Myths, op. 30; and Nocturne and Tarantella, op. 28.

Violinist Bednarz enjoys a versatile career as a soloist, chamber musician, recitalist, concertmaster and pedagogue. She joined the faculty of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., in the fall of 2002.

Bengtson has a unique combination of musical talents ranging from extraordinary pianist, harpsichordist and fortepianist to composer, analyst and scholar of performance practice. As a winner of the La Gesse fellowship, Bengtson has been presented in concert festivals in France and Italy, at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., at Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello and in solo recitals at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. In addition to his concertizing, Bengtson serves as a faculty member of the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia and as a staff pianist at the Curtis Institute of Music.