RCMS Will Host Kick-off Concert

For Green Mt. Suzuki Institute

The Rochester Chamber Music Society will present the annual Green Mountain Suzuki Institute opening concert Sunday, July 5 at 4 p.m. at the Rochester High School auditorium.

Larry Hamberlin will give a pre-concert talk at 3:30 p.m. The afternoon program will include works by Brahms, Schumann, and Mendelssohn with Ben Gish on cello, and Cynthia Huard on piano.

Gish is director of the Walla Walla Valley Academy String Orchestra and has a large studio of cellists and bassists ranging in age from four through 20-something. He is also the director of the Walla Walla Symphony Youth Orchestra and is artist-in-residence at Walla Walla University. Several of his students have won top awards in state, regional and national competitions. Many students from his studio and orchestras have been awarded major scholarships to colleges and universities, including the University of Michigan, Cornell College, the University of Southern California, and Yale University.

Gish is also assistant principal cellist of the Walla Walla Symphony. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music from Walla Walla College, and a master’s degree in cello performance and conducting from Andrews University. He continued post-graduate studies in cello performance at Michigan State University.

Gish performs in solo and chamber music recitals throughout the United States and in Canada and Europe. He is frequently asked to be a clinician for orchestra festivals and guest cello teacher on various campuses. For the past 25 years, he has attended summer music camps in the role of student, parent, and faculty member. These include many of the Suzuki Institutes across America as well as Encore and Meadowmount Summer Schools of Music. Gish is the director of the Walla Wall Suzuki Institute and will join the staff at the Green Mountain Suzuki Institute for the week.

Huard has appeared in recital as a pianist and harpsichordist throughout the United States and in Europe. She is a key element of the summer concert series of the Rochester Chamber Music Society, where as artistic director she performs with internationally known artists. Devoted to chamber music and collaborative music making, she has performed with the Lark Quartet, cellist Nathaniel Rosen, and with chamber players of several orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony, the National Symphony, the Colorado Symphony among others.

In addition to performing chamber music repertoire, Huard frequently performs with renowned vocalists. This past fall she toured the East Coast with soprano Beth Thompson, and in the spring performed with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Chorus in the two-piano version of Orff’s “Carmina Burana.” Most recently she has been presenting contemporary music, including a Vermont premiere of a piece by nationally recognized composer Nico Muhly, commissioned works by Vermont composer Erik Nielsen and T.L. Read, and a piano solo by Tristan Axelrod.

Huard spent three years as a fellowship student in Austria, studying piano and early keyboards and earning degrees in piano performance and harpsichord performance as well as music theory. She is currently an affiliate artist at Middlebury College.

Concert admission is by donation. For more information call 767-9234.