The West Virginia University Symphony Orchestra continues its 2015-2016 season with a concert on Thursday, Feb. 25, that features WVU faculty member Mikylah Myers McTeer as violin soloist.
As with the other concerts presented by WVU’s premiere ensembles, the concert will be free for WVU students. “It has been a thrill for those of us on stage to see so many WVU students in the hall for our concerts,” said Mitchell Arnold, WVU’s director of orchestral activities and an Associate Professor in the School of Music. “As much as our students love to perform, it is even more rewarding to see so many of their peers in the hall. And now they’ll have the opportunity of inviting family and friends from far away to watch the concert online.”
The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Lyell B. Clay Concert Theatre under the baton of Maestro Arnold. It will be webcast on YouTube here thanks to the efforts of students in WVU’s music industry program.
Darko Velichkovski, director of the program, said that the College of Creative Arts is committed to making its live performance offerings available to the public in WV, nationally, and all over the world via Internet, and is well equipped to record and stream performances. To that end, the music industry students have been perfecting the video/audio recording and streaming methods and practice over the last semester.
“It has been my pleasure to work with the College on acquiring and assembling the needed equipment, and to provide the music industry students with another opportunity to acquire, practice and use relevant technical and organizational knowledge and skills by starting a class on recording and streaming live events like this one,” Velichkovski explained.
Alexander Merandi, a multidisciplinary studies major with a music industry minor, will lead the streaming effort with the live production student team for the WVU Symphony Orchestra.
“It’s been an enriching experience to learn to use the equipment, and I’ve really poured myself into it.” The students got a dry run on last semester’s Keynotes Concert.
McTeer joins the orchestra to perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. “There is a glowing lyricism to this beautiful music,” said Arnold. “The virtuosic demands Beethoven makes on the violinist are never simply for show – even though, to be honest, they do provide quite a show. The music has a captivating, luminous and thoughtful quality in its first two movements. The finale practically dances on the stage.”
The concert opens with Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture. Mendelssohn was inspired to write brooding and turbulent music by his visit to the stormy waters surrounding Scotland’s Hebrides Islands. “One can picture the currents at once calm then roiling in Mendelssohn’s masterful tone painting,” said Arnold.
Two works by Richard Wagner, Siegfried Idyll and the overture to his opera Rienzi, complete the evening selections.
McTeer is associate professor of violin at WVU and Coordinator of the WVU String Area. Her performances have been called “energetic and virtuosic” by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and “captivating” by Boulder, Co.’s Daily Camera.
Before joining the WVU music faculty in 2007, she was concertmaster of the San Juan Symphony and assistant professor of violin and viola at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Co. She was also the founder, artistic director, and conductor of the Durango Youth Symphony.
An award-winning chamber musician, McTeer was formerly the violinist of the Red Shoe Piano Trio at Fort Lewis College and the violinist of the Moores Piano Trio in Houston, Texas, which was the silver prize-winner at the 2000 Carmel Chamber Music Competition. She has performed internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and Spain, and was a 19-year member of the Britt Festival Orchestra in Jacksonville, Ore.
This summer McTeer will join the faculty of the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain. McTeer can be heard on Parma Records and Delos Records. On April 8, 2016 her newest recording, “REACT,” music for flute, violin and interactive computer, will be released by Parma Records.
For concert tickets and information, call the WVU Box Office at (304) 293-SHOW.
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CONTACT: David Welsh, WVU College of Creative Arts
304-293-3397; David.Welsh@mail.wvu.edu
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