FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Department of Music in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences will host a summer concert in the Fulbright Chamber Music Series. An encore performance of music composed by Florence Price will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 7, at the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall on campus.

The series was once a summer-only event but has been re-envisioned as an extended celebration of chamber music throughout the year. This summer concert will feature UAMusic's Er-Gene Kahng (violin) and Arkansas Symphony Orchestra musicians Katherine Williamson (violin), Ryan Mooney (viola), and David Gerstein (cello).

The quartet will perform Arkansas-native composer Florence Price's "String Quartet in G Major," "Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint," "String Quartet in A minor," and "Five Folksongs in Counterpoint." This performance is a one-time encore performance of a stellar concert given at Crystal Bridges of American Music last spring. 

The concert is free and open to the public. More details to come for the 2018-19 Fulbright Chamber Music Series.

Florence Price was born in Little Rock in 1888 and began her musical training at an early age. She saw her first composition in print in 1899 at age 11. In 1903, she graduated Valedictorian from Capitol High School in Little Rock, after which she studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts, where she earned a diploma in organ as a soloist and piano as a teacher. In 1906, she returned to Little Rock, teaching at Shorter College. Due to the deteriorating racial climate in Little Rock, Price moved to Chicago in 1927, where she furthered her musical studies and began composing her works of note, winning first place in the Rodman Wanamaker Music Contest in 1932 for her groundbreaking Symphony in E Minor. It was premiered in 1933 by Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, making history as the first work by a black woman to be performed by a major symphony orchestra in the United States. Price died in Chicago in 1953.

About the Musicians

Er-Gene Kahng's performances have been described as "sporting a sweet warm tone" and "a caressing sense of phrase," "translat[ing] the music into a meaningful musical discourse that few virtuosi accomplish;" her "beautiful tone" and "honest musicianship" have marked her performances with a "fresh communicative air."

Kahng has held title positions with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, as well as section positions with the Lancaster Symphony, New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and Eastern Connecticut Symphony. She is currently serving as Concertmaster of Arkansas Philharmonic and Assistant Concertmaster of Fort Smith Symphony. She also performs as a substitute section violinist with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra and Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. She was previously the Associate concertmaster of SoNA (Symphony of Northwest Arkansas) as well as a previous member (season 2011 and 2012) of the Artosphere Festival Orchestra. 

In addition to being a member of the Fulbright Trio, the resident faculty piano trio, Kahng participates and co-founded the Fulbright Summer Chamber Music festival, a 6-week summer chamber music series.  The festival explores chamber music from a variety of stylistic periods and instrumentation, and allows for the collaboration of local and national musicians during mid-May through June every year.  In the latter part of the summer, Kahng serves as the violin faculty and 2nd violinist in a string quartet as part of the Bay View Music Festival in Petoskey, Michigan. 

Kahng works regularly with students through guest masterclasses at colleges, leading sectionals or conducting chamber music coachings at the secondary level. Her students have gained admission to some of the top music schools in the country, including New England Conservatory, University of Southern California, Peabody Conservatory/Johns Hopkins University, University of Minnesota, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, as well as being prizewinners of the MTNA regional and national level competitions. Kahng studied with Mark Kaplan, Erick Friedman, Syoko Aki, and Almita Vamos as well as with members of the Tokyo String Quartet. 

Kahng is a member of College Music Society and American String Teachers Association. She presents regularly at conferences by giving lecture recitals and performing new music.

During the 2016-17 academic year, Kahng was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England.

Violinist Katherine Williamson has been an arts partner of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and Rockefeller String Quartet since October of 2013. To date, her most exciting Arkansas experience has been getting to play Vivaldi's "Spring" as violin soloist with the ASO under the direction of Philip Mann. A native of Saint Paul, Minnesota, Williamson is also currently a substitute violinist for the Minnesota Orchestra and spent the summer of 2015 playing in Minneapolis as part of the Mill City Summer Opera Orchestra.

Music has taken Williamson from the rolling hills of the Meadowmount School of Music in New York, to the mountains of Breckenridge, to the stage of the Konzerthaus in Berlin. She has served as associate concertmaster of the National Repertory Orchestra, section violin of the Moritzburg Festival Orchestra, and section violin of the Lakes Area Music Festival. She has also been an associate member of the Chicago Civic Orchestra and has played as a semifinalist with the New World Symphony.

Williamson has always been particularly drawn to the string quartet. She had her first chamber music experience playing Beethoven's String Quartet Op.18 No.1 when she was 13 while playing the viola, which she still plays in addition to the violin. Notable coaches include Alex Kerr, Jan Vogler, Charles Castleman, John Corigliano, Ik-Hwan Bae, Jorja Fleezanis and members of the Guarneri, Pacifica, Pro Arte, and Artaria String Quartets.

Williamson graduated from Indiana University in December of 2012 where she received a Bachelor of Music with Distinction under the instruction of professor Mark Kaplan. While at IU, she also studied pedagogy under Brenda Brenner and Mimi Zweig. Williamson maintains a private teaching studio in Little Rock in addition to teaching at the Community School of the Arts at UCA in Conway.

One of Williamson's most powerful musical experiences so far has been playing Bruckner's Fourth Symphony alongside her parents and other musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra in the spring of 2013 under the direction of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. 

Ryan Mooney started the violin at the age of four with his aunt, Margaret Pressley. He then switched to viola at age 15 and went on to study with Ian Swenson and Jodi Levitz at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has attended such music festivals as Roundtop and Tanglewood where he had the pleasure of performing with the Mark Morris Dance Troup at Jacob's Pillow. He was also a fellow of the Carnegie Hall exchange program where he performed with his quartet in Carnegie Hall and on a Central Asian tour. Mooney has a large studio of violin and viola students, and teaches at the Community School of the Arts at UCA in Conway. He is married to Cathi Whaley and is a new father to Carter Emerson Mooney.

David Gerstein, a devoted performer of chamber and contemporary music has played concerts all over the world, from the stage of Carnegie Hall to the Great Wall of China. Gerstein has recently appeared in concert with the Ying Quartet, flutist Leone Buyse, clarinetist Michael Webster, mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer, soprano Renee Fleming, cellist Fred Sherry, violinist Jonathan Carney, and Vern Sutton of The Prairie Home Companion.

David is currently the principal cellist of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, which he has been a member of since September '08. He is also the cellist of the Quapaw String Quartet, which performs regularly at the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, as well as in schools all over the state as part of the ASO's Arts Partner program.

Gerstein has played as principal of the Shepherd School Symphony and Chamber Orchestra, The Eastman Philharmonia, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. He has performed under the baton of great conductors such as James Levine, Bernard Haitink, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, Oliver Knussen, Mark Elder, Larry Rachleff, and Stefan Asbury. During the summer of '10 as a guest artist at Tanglewood Music Center, Gerstein performed in the American Premiere of Elliott Carter's What Are Years. The performance received favorable reviews in both the New York Times and the Boston Globe. Gerstein performed as a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center from 2006-2008. Past summers have included residencies at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, and the Colorado Quartet's Chamber Music Institute on Cape Cod.

David has maintained an active relationship with performing and promoting new works by little-known composers. He has received grants from the Howard Hanson Institute for American Music and has performed actively with groups such as the Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble and Ossia: New Music (both in Rochester, New York) as well as the 20/21 Ensemble and Musiqa (in Houston, Texas). In 2008, Mr. Gerstein performed many works of Elliott Carter as part of his 100th birthday celebration at Tanglewood with Carter in attendance.

In 2008 Mr. Gerstein premiered Ekphrasis sobre el "Miedo" de Tanguy by Colombian composer Jairo Duarte-Lopez. The piece won the national composition award in Colombia and was recently published along with a recording that Gerstein recorded in March of 2008.

Gerstein has participated in the prestigious New York String Orchestra Seminar in New York City, presenting concerts in Carnegie Hall under the direction of Jaime Laredo. He was a founding member of the Cape Cod Ensemble, a consistently multi-faceted chamber ensemble. CCE was invited to attend the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition as Semi-Finalists. In the summer of 2009, CCE performed concerts in Little Rock and Ashland, Oregon.

David received a B.M. with Distinction from the Eastman School of Music where he studied with David Ying. He completed his studies at Rice University in 2008, where he earned a Master of Music under the direction of Norman Fischer.