Last modified: Friday, May 20, 2011
Indiana University pre-college Violin Virtuosi to tour Scandinavia
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 20, 2011
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Following a successful tour to Argentina last year, the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music's pre-college Violin Virtuosi ensemble begins another tour at the end of May, this time to Scandinavia. Invited as a featured ensemble at the European String Teachers Association Conference in Falun, the tour will also take the group to Copenhagen, Malmo and Stockholm.
A pre-tour concert will be offered free to the public on Sunday, May 22, at 2:30 p.m. in Ford-Crawford Hall on the Bloomington campus. The program includes works by Kreisler, Mendelssohn, Sarasate, Kroll, Smetena, Atar Arad, Dvorak, Paganini, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Waxman and Copland.
This is the Violin Virtuosi's second trip to Sweden -- the first was in 2006, at a time when the ensemble comprised a different generation of performers.
The May 22 concert comes at the end of a busy performance year for the group. In addition to multiple concerts in Bloomington, the Virtuosi performed in Miami, Boca Raton, Chicago, DePauw University and at the American String Teachers Association Convention in Kansas City.
The tour is sponsored by the Starling Foundation, a longtime supporter of the Jacobs School and its Pre-College String Academy program. Starling began its close association with the school in 1983 and began supporting the academy in 2003. This will be the eighth time the foundation has sponsored an international tour of this kind.
Over the past few years, the Virtuosi has completed five successful tours of France and, in 2004, was enthusiastically received on its tour of Japan. In 2006, in addition to the tour of Sweden, the group toured Italy, where it presented the entire Beethoven Violin Sonata Cycle. In May 2010, the ensemble toured to Argentina with Dean Emeritus Charles Webb as accompanist.
The performers are gifted students from Bloomington and beyond who study at the pre-college academy, where they are immersed in an intense musical curriculum of weekly private lessons, chamber music, theory, master classes and rehearsals.
The Emmy Award-nominated documentary Circling Around -- The Violin Virtuosi has been aired on PBS throughout the United States.
For more information, visit https://music.indiana.edu.
