Westminster Conservatory is set to present two free concerts Feb. 9.
Faculty members are set to present Dances From Around the World and An Evening at the Movies with Nino Rota.
Dances From Around the World is scheduled for 3 p.m. at Bristol Chapel on the campus of Westminster Choir College, 101 Walnut Lane, Princeton.
Westminster faculty members Megan Hofreiter and Ikumi Hiraiwa will perform dance music for piano duet and two pianos by Dvorák, Debussy, Grieg, Brahms, Copland, Piazzolla and others.
Hiraiwa won first place at the Westminster Piano Graduate Competition in 2006 and the UCLA Benno Rubinyi Competition in 2005. Ms. She maintains a private studio in Lawrenceville, N.J., and she has been a member of the Westminster Conservatory faculty, teaching piano and theory since 2006.
Hofreiter teaches private lessons at Westminster Conservatory of Music, where she is also director of the summer piano camp. She is an active accompanist, playing for Suzuki violin classes at Westminster Conservatory and ballet classes at the American Repertory Ballet’s Princeton Ballet School.
An Evening at the Movies with Nino Rota is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in Bristol Chapel.
The performance will feature Westminster Conservatory faculty members Kevin Willois on flute, Melissa Bohl on oboe, Kenneth Ellison on clarinet, Craig Levesque on horn, Hyun Soo Lim on violin, Marjorie Selden on viola, Paul Hofreiter on bass, Dezheng Ping on violin, Galina Prilutskaya on piano; Kyu-Jung Rhee on piano and Ruth Ochs, conductor, as well as guest performers Peggy Skemer and Loren Stata.
The program will highlight film composer Nino Rota’s work, featuring his Piccola Offerta, Sette Pezzi per Bambini, Trio for Flute, Violin and Piano, Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, and Nonetto.
Italian composer, pianist and conductor, Nino Rota is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli’s Shakespeare films, and for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy; receiving an Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II.
Westminster Conservatory is the community music school of Rider University’s Westminster College of the Arts. Westminster Choir College is located at 101 Walnut Lane in Princeton, N.J. To learn more about this performance, visit www.rider.edu/arts.
