Baylor to Host Summer Piano Institute June 19-25

June 9, 2005

by Dick Veit (254) 710-3991
The Baylor University School of Music will present its annual Summer Piano Institute June 19-25 in Roxy Grove Hall on the Baylor campus. This year's Institute will host a total of 40 high school piano students from Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
An opening faculty recital will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, June 19, featuring Kristian Klefstad, who will perform Liszt's Ballade No. 2; Terry Lynn Hudson, who will perform Ravel's Miroirs; and Bradley Bolen and Vincent de Vries, who will present Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Haydn. Bolen, Klefstad, de Vries and Brian Marks also will perform an eight-hand arrangement of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.
Baylor music faculty also will perform a recital at 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 20, featuring Marks, who will play Schumann's Piano Sonata No. 2; Mary Rich and Vicki Jacks Conway, who will perform Rachmaninoff's Suite No. 2; Marks and Natalie Downey, who will present William Bolcom's Recuerdos for Two Pianos; and organist Joyce Jones, who will perform her Improvisations on "Aka tombo" and Ives's Variations on "America."
Baylor keyboard students will be featured in a 7:30 p.m. recital on Tuesday, June 21. Pianists taking part will be John Wilson (Haydn), Drew Sims (Chopin), Kendra Wharton (Prokofiev), Crystal Sparks (Liszt), Conrad Mayes (Chopin), Heather Ward (Brahms) and Monica Harper (Vierne and Messiaen).
Baylor students also will perform a recital at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 23. Pianists taking part will be: Whitney Hedin (Schumann), Katie Thompson (Barber), Holly Blake (Brahms), Melissa Creider (Chopin and Prokofiev), Kristen George (Liszt), Jonathan Kaan (Chopin) and Christopher Johnson (Boëllmann).
The week-long series of recitals will come to a close with two events featuring many of the Institute's high school-age students at 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 24, and at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 25.
All of the recitals are free and open to the public. For more information, call the keyboard division of the Baylor School of Music at (254) 710-1417.