Summer Chamber Music Festival Closes With Trio, String Sextet

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Clockwise from top right, Geoff Robson, David Gerstein, Paulo Eskitch and Lewis Menendez.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The fourth annual KUAF/Fulbright Summer Chamber Music Festival finishes its season on Thursday, June 28, with the last of its six performances. Program VI features works by Griebling, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky. The free concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in the Fine Arts Building at the University of Arkansas. A reception will follow.

The Chamber Music Festival will feature guest artists as well as faculty from the University of Arkansas department of music in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. Performances will include a variety of chamber music using diverse instrumental groups from many musical eras.

Program VI artists include Trio Arkansas performing Wildfire by Arkansas composer Karen Griebling (b. 1957) and “Piano Trio in D-minor, Op. 63” by Robert Schumann (1810-1856).   Trio Arkansas members Geoffrey Robson, violin, and David Gerstein, cello, will be joined by Paulo Eskitch, viola for the festival’s final number. Complemented by University of Arkansas faculty, the musicians will close the series with “Souvenir of Florence for String Sextet” by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893).

Trio Arkansas, formed in 2010, is committed to performing great works of the piano trio repertoire across the state of Arkansas. Robson has been the Associate Conductor of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra since 2008. Gerstein is the principle cellist of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and has performed all around the globe. Pianist Louis Menendez, a transplant from Manhattan, NY to Hot Springs, AR, has conducted and musically prepared over 140 opera productions in the USA, Europe, Israel and Japan.

Eskitch is currently an adjunct instructor of violin, viola, and chamber music at Tulsa Community College and adjunct instructor of viola at the University of Tulsa.

Free parking is available in the Stadium Drive Parking Facility, where parking is free after 5 p.m. Entrance to the parking facility is on Stadium Drive, and the facility’s elevator will take patrons to street level directly across from the Fine Arts Center. Music previews of all six programs may be found at http://www.fulbrightsummermusic.uark.edu/index.php.

Stephen Gates, cellist and professor of music in Fulbright College, will discuss the festivals final performance on the Monday, June 25, edition of “Ozarks at Large” at noon and 7 p.m. on KUAF 91.3 FM. Listen for an interview with Gates and additional artists on “Of Note with Katy Henriksen” On the Thursday, June 28, at 11 a.m., also on KUAF.