Allegheny Ensemble Performs Wednesday, March 30

SALISBURY, MD---The Allegheny Ensemble—cellist Jeffrey Schoyen, violinist Sachiho Murasugi, and pianist Ernest Barretta—with guest violinist and violist Amos Lawrence, performs at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 30, in the Great Hall of Salisbury University’s Holloway Hall.

The program includes Fauré’s “Piano Quartet in C Minor,” Mozart’s “Piano Quartet in E Flat Major” and Dvoâk’s Bagatelles.

Named for the Allegheny River which flows through the Pittsburgh area where the musicians originally played together, the ensemble’s members reunited as a trio upon moving to the Eastern Shore.

Conductor and music director of the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and the Salisbury Youth Orchestra, Schoyen teaches cello and bass at SU.  He has given concerts throughout the United States, Germany, Mexico and Spain, and received a Frank Huntington Beebe Grant to study in London with William Pleeth. He is also a Tanglewood Gustav Golden Award recipient. Schoyen honed his cello skills at the New England Conservatory of Music and Carnegie Mellon University, before earning his D.M.A. at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Murasugi has performed extensively as a professional orchestral and chamber musician. She has been concertmaster of the Sorg Opera Orchestra in Ohio and the Filarmonic del Bajio in Mexico. She also has been a member of the West Virginia Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic and Springfield Symphony. She received the National Endowment for the Arts Rural Residency Grant in chamber music and performed a recital at Museo del Prado in Madrid that was broadcast on Radio Nacional de Espana. Holding a D.M.A. from Ohio State University, she is concertmaster for the SSO.

A successful soloist and chamber musician, Barretta has performed extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada. A member of the piano faculty at Julliard School of Music, he recently appeared at the Seoul Music Festival and Academy in South Korea. A collaborative artist, he has played with such internationally recognized musicians as baritone Christopher Robertson and trumpeter Terry Everson. He studied at Oberlin Conservatory and earned a D.M.A. from Peabody Conservatory.

Lawrence, assistant concertmaster of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra in South Carolina since 1997, has played with the Teatro Communale “Maggio Musicale Fiorentino” in Florence Italy. He also has performed at the International Musician's Seminar at Prussia Cove in Great Britain; the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico; the Scotia Festival in Halifax, Canada; the Colorado Festival of Music in Boulder, CO; the Baroque Performance Institute in Oberlin, OH; the Taos School of Music in New Mexico; the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, CA; and the Israel Festival in Caesaria, Israel. Lawrence has served on the faculty of the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina and the College of Charleston in South Carolina.

Sponsored by the Department of Music, admission is free and the public is invited.  For more information call 410-543-6385 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.