The Valley Concert Society will present Pocket Symphonies on Thursday, October 2, at 7:30 p.m. in the Matsqui Centennial Auditorium.
The Bergmann Duo will be joined onstage by two of Vancouver’s outstanding string musicians. Violinist Jasper Wood is the chair of the Strings Division at UBC’s School of Music. He has performed at least twice for the Valley Concert Society, once in a duo concert with guitarist Daniel Bolshoy in 2014 and again in a program of jazzy Christmas tunes with pianist David Riley a year and a half later. Winner of numerous awards, Jasper has enjoyed an international solo performing career. He has appeared on television in performance and documentary productions.
Cellist Sungyong Lim was born in Korea. He grew up and went to school in Seoul. Lim eventually moved to Germany to study music. There he made wonderful new connections and performed extensively, both solo and in chamber ensembles throughout Europe. He is a member of the Borealis String Quartet which is in residence at Kwantlen Polytechnic University where he also serves as an instructor.
Wood and Lim will be highlighted on Thursday when they play the unaccompanied Duo for Violin and Cello by Zoltan Kodály. The multi-talented Hungarian composer was also a music critic writing for newspapers and an educator, serving as a professor and director of a music academy. His “Kodály method” for teaching music to children has been widely adopted around the world.
Besides all this, Kodály was an ethno-musicologist. He worked with Bela Bártok to travel throughout Hungary visiting villages and recording or notating folk music as the villagers sang them. Although this Duo, Op. 7, is entirely Kodály’s own composition, there are many folk themes and idioms scattered throughout it. Wood and Lim will perform the first movement.
The full program for this concert is now available online at www.valleyconcertsociety.com . Tickets are also available there at $32 for adults and $20 for students.
For more information call 604-289-3377.
John Wiebe - President
The Valley Concert Society