The Viola Studio in the West Virginia University School of Music will present Viola Day, Saturday, Nov. 8. The event will feature guest artist Marylene Gingras-Roy, who is a violist in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and a professor at Duquesne University.

The workshop will be held from 9 a.m.-7 p.m. at the WVU Creative Arts Center.

The event is free, but registration is required. To register in advance, participants should email wvuvioladay@gmail.com. Otherwise, they can register the morning of the event from 9-9:30 a.m. in the CAC main lobby.

“WVU Viola Day will be a day of viola fun,” said Andrea Priester Houde, a viola professor at WVU. “We are already expecting participants from across the region, including West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and North Carolina.”

Events for the day will include master classes by Gingras-Roy and Houde, a technique class, a lecture on “Life in the Orchestra,” a viola choir reading session and viola yoga.

In addition, representatives from The Potter Violin Company will be present to show instruments and how to do repairs, as well as how to rehair bows for all string instruments.

Gingras-Roy will present a viola recital at 6 p.m. in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (200A). The recital is free and open to the public.

Gingras-Roy, a native of Quebec City, joined the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra viola section in 1997. In 2004 she was promoted to fourth chair. She studied at the Conservatoire de Musique de Québec with Douglas McNabney and François Paradis and graduated in 1993 with unanimous first prizes in both in viola and chamber music.

She was the recipient of Canada and Québec Arts Councils’ scholarship grants, which enabled her to attend the Harid Conservatory with Victoria Chiang and the Curtis Institute of Music with Karen Tuttle and Joseph DePasquale. She earned an Artist Diploma in 1997.

Gingras-Roy has participated in many festivals, including the Festival Dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, the Solti Project at Carnegie Hall, the Jerusalem Music Festival and the the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra, where she served as Principal violist. She is also a member of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony in Idaho. She is heard regularly in chamber music concerts and maintains a full teaching schedule at Duquesne University, privately and is the viola coach for the Three Rivers Young People Orchestra. She has taught at summer music festivals such as Domaine Forget, Québec, the Interharmony Festival in Germany and Italy, and the Advanced Chamber Music Seminar in Pittsburgh.

For more information about WVU Viola Day, call 304-212-5777, or email wvuvioladay@gmail.com or Andrea.Houde@mail.wvu.edu.

-WVU-

cl/10/27/14

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304.293.4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

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