It’s a big weekend for four students at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music.
This is their moment in the spotlight, a chance to showcase their enormous musical gifts before an audience of their peers, faculty members and a special guest — the president of the university — at the 43rd annual President’s Concert.
But the quartet of musicians — a clarinetist, a violinist, a pianist and a vocalist — will be staring at an empty seat where current UA President Ann Weaver Hart was expected to sit. Hart has already sent her regrets that she will miss the performances at Crowder Hall on Saturday, Feb. 6, and Sunday, Feb. 7. Music school officials said she has attended only one President’s Concert since arriving at the UA in late 2012.
It’s not uncommon that the president skips the President’s Concert, said School of Music spokeswoman Ingvi Kallen. But there will be a past UA president in the audience this weekend, she said. Henry Koffler, who was president from 1982-91, “doesn’t miss any of them.”
“He’s our biggest fan,” Kallen said.
This year’s Concerto Competition winners will join the Arizona Symphony Orchestra for performances at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at Crowder Hall, North Park Avenue and East Speedway.
- Soprano
- Caroline Crawford
- : The Nogales, Arizona, native is a senior voice student. She has given recitals in Russia and Switzerland and had lead roles in several UA-produced operas. She also is an accomplished mariachi singer whose resume includes performances at the Las Cruces Mariachi Conference, the Rosarito Mariachi Conference and the Tucson Mariachi Conference.
She will sing Luigi Arditi’s “Il bacio,” which she described in concert program notes as a “vibrant, passionate, yet fun declaration of one’s first love.”
“This piece has all of the nerves and giddiness one has at the beginning of such a relationship. It is also the first real piece I ever sang — and thus is a testament to the development and maturity I have achieved studying here at the University of Arizona. The excitement in this song could be compared to the emotions I feel regarding the future and my career as an opera singer.”
- Clarinetist
- Daniel Becker:
- The doctoral student has subbed with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and spent five years — two of them as principal clarinet — with the Yakima Symphony Orchestra in Washington. A music theorist as well as a performer, he has presented clinics and master classes throughout the Western United States. This May, he heads to Edinburgh, Scotland, to present at the Second Annual Conference for Progressive Rock.
He will perform Louis Spohr’s Clarinet Concerto No. 4 in E minor. Becker said the piece and Spohr’s three other clarinet concerti saved the composer from being overlooked by history.
“While he was nearly as famous as Beethoven in his day, Spohr’s music faded from popularity until about the middle of the 20th century, when it experienced somewhat of a revival, in particular his clarinet concerti,” Becker said in concert notes. “... In the fourth concerto, the first movement was written in traditional sonata form, featuring many virtuosic lines for the clarinet. The mood is at times tumultuous and gentle at others, displaying the full range of the instrument’s capabilities.”
- Violinist
- Immanuel Abraham
- : The doctoral student has degrees from the University of Michigan, where he won the 2015 Patterson Award and Engraved Medal for promoting diversity in the arts. In addition to playing violin, he composes solo and chamber works that have premiered in Chicago, Las Vegas and New York. In addition to his doctoral work in violin performance, the Arizona Symphony Orchestra co-concertmaster also is studying composition.
He has written the allegro non troppo cadenza for Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major, which he will perform this weekend.
“The Brahms Violin Concerto is in every way definable as a lusciously-immense chamber work, with a violin obbligato,” he said in program notes. “Being a titan of the violin repertoire, it is an honor for me to speak a voice in its historical canon, together with friends, in the Arizona Symphony Orchestra.”
- Pianist
- Yi Qing Tang:
- A native of China and a doctoral student in piano performance, Tang has a handful of international competition wins to her name and has performed around the globe, including at music festivals in the U.S., China, Singapore, Austria, Italy and Canada.
She will perform Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, “a highly contrapuntal, intense, diabolic and powerful concerto,” she said in program notes.
“I always have so much fun playing this music. It is a fantasy, with dark color inside, however it has one of the most beautiful beginnings in the concerto literature,” she said. “His second piano concerto was considered to be one of the most challenging piano concertos in history, in fact, almost unplayable. I was very lucky to learn this work without being told how difficult this piece is.”
