Please come join an afternoon recital featuring Nigel Armstrong and Yi-Fang Wu
(Free Admission)
Program:
Claude Debussy: Beau soir, La plus que lente
Gabriel Fauré: Andante
George Gershwin: "Summertime & A woman is a sometime thing" from Porgy and Bess. Arranged by Heifetz
Nigel Armstrong: Improvisation on solo violin
Frédéric Chopin: Ballade No.4 (piano solo)
Cesar Franck: Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major
About the Artist:
Nigel Armstrong is emerging as a dynamic and creative artist both within and beyond the realm of classical music. From his musical beginnings as a member of "The Little Fiddlers" in Sonoma, CA to collaborations with tango musicians in Argentina he's enjoyed using the violin in a versatile manner throughout his life.
As soloist Nigel has performed with orchestras such as the Dusseldorf Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, YOA Orchestra of the Americas, the Pacific Symphony, and the Boston Pops, and with conductors including Sir Neville Marriner, Carlos Miguel Prieto, and Carl St. Clair. He received the 2nd Prize, the Ole Bull Prize, and the Nordheim Award at the 2010 Menuhin Competition Senior Division in Oslo, Norway, and got the 4th Prize plus the Prize for the Best Performance of the Commissioned Work (STOMP, by John Corigliano) at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition. As a chamber musician his concerts have taken him across the US and abroad--highlights have included opportunities to share the stage with the Tokyo String Quartet and pianist Jonathan Biss.
Nigel feels fortunate to have had the chance to explore great orchestral literature throughout his career. Since 2009 he's appeared as concertmaster with the Colburn Orchestra, LA's American Youth Symphony, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony, YOA Orchestra of the Americas, and the New York String Orchestra in their annual Carnegie hall performances. Beginning in the 2016/17 season he serves as concertmaster of the Santa Cruz Symphony.
A graduate of the Colburn School and the Curtis Institute of Music, Nigel's teachers have included Arnold Steinhardt, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Robert Lipsett, Zaven Melikian, Li Lin, and Donald Weilerstein, among others.
As a former English major, Yi-Fang Wu decided to pursue her love of music after graduating from National Tsing-Hua University in Taiwan and came to Cleveland Institute of Music to study with Paul Schenly and Daniel Shapiro for Master Degree in Piano Performance. CIM was the very first music school in her life, and there she quickly absorbed music theory, history, andeverything else at a dizzying pace during the two-year program. She shockingly discovered after those years that her heart did not actually belong to solo performance, but instead enjoyed musical interactions with others, and proceeded to join the Collaborative Piano program with Anita Pontremoli at CIM. It was the most exciting period during which Yi-Fang developed a love of string repertoire and since then, she has collaborated with many wonderful chamber musicians while also maintaining for position as a staff pianist and chamber coach of San Francisco Conservatory’s Pre-College division. Yi-Fang has performed at the Eastern Music Festival, Hidden Valley Festival, The Quartet Program, Miami Music Festival, International Music Festival and Workshop in Germany, and Savonlinna Music Academy in Finland.