BEMIDJI, Minn. — Bemidji State University presents a faculty trio performing a program of classical music for piano, violin and cello at 7:30 p.m., Sunday, March 29, in the Thompson Recital Hall of the Bangsberg Fine Arts Complex.

Open to the public free of charge, the concert will feature pianist Dr. Stephen Carlson, violinist Dr. Michelle Laliberte and cellist Dr. Patrick Riley.

The program will include classical 18th, 19th and 20th century compositions chosen to highlight a variety of moods, styles and attributes of the three instruments. The concert will feature:
•    Three movements of Franz Joseph Haydn’s “G Major Piano Trio,” which begins with the first movement of a simple tune worked into a short set of variations and ends with the popular “Gypsy Rondo.”
•    Joaquin Turina’s “Piano Trio No. 2 in b minor, Op. 76,” a piece that progresses from the relaxed first movement to a lively second dance movement, concluding in the third with a cello solo drawing on the themes of the first two movements.
•    Antonin Dvorak’s “Dumky,” a poetic ballad or epic lament featuring the “dumky” pattern, a tricky discontinuous musical style used by Dvorak to delight his Bohemian and Moravian audiences in a tour he completed just before moving to America.

The trio most recently performed together to present Beethoven’s “Triple Concerto” under the baton of Dr. Beverly Everett and the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra.

Faculty Artists
Stephen Carlson is a versatile piano soloist and chamber musician who made his New York debut as a solo recitalist in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in 2005. He has performed at many colleges, universities and festivals throughout the Midwest and Southeastern U.S. and Eastern Canada. As one half of the McKay-Carlson Piano Duo, Carlson has performed with members of the South Carolina Philharmonic and the Charleston and Greenville, S.C., symphonies. Carlson joined the BSU faculty in 2006 as an assistant professor of music and coordinator of piano. He holds a doctorate in musical arts from the University of Iowa.

Michelle Laliberte, violin, has studied with members of the Takacs, Juilliard and Fine Arts String Quartets. She has been on the faculties of Southwest State University and the University of Minnesota Morris. She has coached various chamber ensembles and taught courses at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the University of Notre Dame and the University of Colorado-Boulder, where she earned her doctor of musical arts degree. She teaches at the Headwaters School of Music in Bemidji and as an adjunct instructor at BSU.

Patrick Riley, cello, has studied chamber music with the Juilliard, Hungarian and Tokyo String Quartets. He has been on the string faculty at BSU since 1973 and has performed chamber music with many local, regional and national chamber ensembles, including most recently the American Conservatory Piano Trio, the Dorian String Trio, the Tresca String Quartet and the Minnesota Chamber Music Society Piano Quartet. He also plays double bass in the BSU Jazz Quartet and the Bemidji Big Band. He holds his Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

For more information, contact the Department of Music at (218) 755-2915.

FOR YOUR CALENDAR
March 29 – 7:30 p.m. – A faculty trio of piano, violin and cello presented by Bemidji State University. Location: Thompson Recital Hall of the Bangsberg Fine Arts Complex, BSU campus. Admission: free of charge.