The six student winners of the Ithaca College School of Music Concerto Competition will perform as soloists with the Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jeffery Meyer, on Saturday, March 3. The free concert will begin at 8:15 p.m. in Ford Hall in the James J. Whalen Center for Music.
Freshman Andrew Bergevin will perform the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto; junior Christopher Jones will perform the first movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto; junior Hart Lundergan-Linker will play the fourth movement of Muczynski’s Concerto for Alto Saxophone; sophomore Rose Valby will play the first movement of Mozart’s Horn Concerto no. 2; graduate student Larissa Venze will perform the Concerto for Marimba and Strings by Sejourne; and junior Melissa Wertheimer will play a concerto for piccolo by Lieberman. The concert will open with Wagner’s Introduction to Act III of Lohengrin.
Held annually, the concerto competition is open to Ithaca College students enrolled in private lessons with a School of Music faculty member during the semester of the competition. This year, 15 students made it through the preliminary auditions and proceeded to the finals, where they performed for a seven-member faculty committee.
Andrew Bergevin is currently a student of Susan Waterbury. He is a section first violinist with the Binghamton Philharmonic and is a substitute with the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra. He has won the Binghamton Youth Symphony and Southern Tier Music Teachers’ Association Concerto Competitions.
Christopher Jones, from the studio of Susan Waterbury, is a second-time winner of the concerto competition. His musical honors throughout high school include sitting concertmaster of the All-South Jersey and New Jersey All-State Orchestras, selection to the All-Eastern Orchestra Festival, and membership in the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra. Jones attended the 2006 National Orchestral Institute Summer Festival.
Hart Lundergan-Linker, a student of Steven Mauk, received his high school diploma from the North Carolina School of the Arts. He has participated in the Brevard Music Center, Siskiyou Saxophone Workshop, Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony, Athens Classic City Band, and the University of Georgia study-abroad programs in Italy.
Rose Katherine Valby studies with Alex Shuhan and Amy Sanchez. Valby has performed with the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra and won the Greater Buffalo Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition for 2004–5. She was selected for the 2004 Conference All-State orchestra as well as the 2005 All-Eastern Conference Symphonic Orchestra.
Larissa Venzie earned her bachelor’s in music in percussion performance from Ithaca College in 2004, studying with Gordon Stout. After graduating, she auditioned and won the option to attend the Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris in the fall of 2004 but chose to continue her studies in the United States.
Melissa Wertheimer studies with Wendy Mehne. Wertheimer played second flute in 2006 and 2004 with the August Symphony Orchestra, a New Jersey community orchestra. She has also performed traditional choro music of Brazil with the Ithaca Brazilian Choro Ensemble and the trio Chorio.
The Ithaca College School of Music offers some 300 free concerts each academic year. More information on these performances is available by calling (607) 274-3717 or visiting www.ithaca.edu/concerts.
