String Musicians To Unite At UConn Cello Festival

Beginning tonight with a performance by renowned cellist Jeffrey Solow, the UConn Department of Music and the Community School of the Arts will sponsor a cello festival. The festival is designed for professional, college and student cellists. Solow will be the featured clinician for Saturday's master classes, Mary Lou Rylands will be a guest clinician and UConn cello professor Kangho Lee will join her at the festival's Saturday night concert.

Tonight at von der Mehden Recital Hall, Solow will perform with pianist Minyoung Lee. The recital will begin at 8 p.m. and admission is $10 for general public or free for those with festival registration.

The main festival kicks off Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. at the Music Building with registration necessary. The day will include an All-State workshop with Mary Lou Rylands, which is designed to give young cellists the chance to perform audition music or other selected pieces and in turn receive guidance about some of the more difficult aspects. In addition, the festival will host vendor exhibits, a performance by UConn faculty chamber music ensemble, a reading session and rehearsal for the cello choir (all festival participants welcome), food accommodations and an evening concert featuring UConn faculty, the cello ensemble and guest artists.

Solow is a professor of cello at Temple University, and has performed for audiences in the U.S., Asia, Latin America and Europe as a soloist, chamber musician and recitalist. His extensive repertoire is made up of more than 20 concertos, and he has made many recordings.

Rylands is the professor emeritus of cello performance and chamber music here at UConn. She received her training at the Yale School of Music and the Oberlin Conservatory. In addition to her teaching, Rylands performs regularly in solo and concerto performances.

Lee, a much sought after soloist and chamber musician, has been performing since his orchestral debut with the Seoul Philharmonic at just 12 years old. He has performed in Korea, the United States and Europe with the Korean Broadcast Service Symphony, the Korean Symphony, the Seoul Academy Symphony, the Suwon Philharmonic, the Euro-Asia Symphony, Yale Philharmonia and the Haddonfield Symphony.