Friday Evening Music Club

Next Recital: April 28, 2023 (scroll down for details)

Mission

To draw area performers and audiences for shared artistic programs and camaraderie, and to encourage excellence in young musicians through performance and scholarship.

About the Friday Evening Music Club 

FEMC was founded in 1944 to promote the performing arts in Westmoreland County and give musicians a place to practice and socialize. It is a community of area musicians, some of whom are private music teachers, but many who work in other fields and enjoy music-making as an avocation. Some club members simply enjoy being part of the organization by attending the concerts; the concerts are open to members and non-members alike.

“There’s really no other [group] like it. It allows you to make connections, it allows you to meet people that you would not ordinarily meet.” ~ Matt Klumpp, member and pianist

In 1969, FEMC’s leadership helped to found the Westmoreland Symphony. Reuniting with them fosters the musical growth of our shared community, with mutual support, stability, and strength. We have common interests and common fellowship, but also provide unique avenues into the experience and sharing of great classical music. We now celebrate our shared roots and come back home to be together again.

Recital Dates

April 28, 2023 – Season Finale – Campana Chapel

The Friday Evening Music Club of the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra is pleased to announce our Season Finale, to be held will be held this Friday, April 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Campana Chapel and Lecture Hall on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg (UPG).

The recital will feature music dating from 1722 to 1936. Flutist Roger Cazden and pianist Marisa Cazden will perform a Minuet in D Minor from the notebook J.S. Bach presented to his 2nd wife, singer Anna Magdalena Bach and Gabriel Fauré’s beautiful Morceau de Concours (1898). Roger will also present the Allemande and Bourée Anglaise from Bach’s Partita in A Minor, BWV 1013. Moving to the 20th century, pianist Chris Loughran has chosen to perform Voiles from Claude Debussy’s first book of Préludes. The wonderfully impressionistic sound painting of “veils” or “sails” may have been an aural description of the veils worn by a dancer at a performance he experienced. Swiss-American composer, Ernest Bloch penned an equally descriptive set of three pieces, Poems of the Sea (1922) while living in Cleveland. Pianist Beverly Hritz will perform Waves, the first of these. The two pieces balance each other well with their unique impressionistic beauty.

German composer Paul Hindemith wrote sonatas for almost every orchestral instrument, all of which show his intimate knowledge of the intricacies of each. The Sonata for flute and piano was penned in 1936, with the rumblings of WWII on his doorstep. Flutist Nina Edgar and pianist Hazel Braun team up to present this blockbuster sonata in which the listener can detect the ominous nature of the Nazi regime. In increasing danger, Hindemith and his Jewish wife were able to move to Switzerland two years after the piece was written, and in 1940 they emigrated to the U.S. for the composer to take a teaching position at Yale.

Admission is free to club members and voluntary donations are accepted from non-members at the door. All are invited to a reception following the recital.

Past Recitals

March 24, 2023 – Spring Breaks – Campana Chapel

The Friday Evening Music Club of the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra is pleased to announce our March recital, to be held will be held this Friday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m. at the Campana Chapel and Lecture Hall on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg (UPG).

Among the performers on Friday (we may have a surprise pianist joining the line-up!) are Club members, Dr. TJ Maroon, piano, and Louise Daniels, oboe. Dr. Maroon will be honoring Ukraine by performing two piano pieces by Ukraine’s best-known living composer, Valentin Silvestrov, who is now a refugee living in Germany. He will play the 2nd movement of Kitsch-Music (1977), and Three Bagatelles, Op.1 (2005). Ms. Daniels, who directs and performs with the Seton Hill University double reed quartet, will feature the group in movements from Quartet in F Major, FaWV N:F1, for two oboes and two bassoons by Johann Friedrich Fasch, a composer who crossed paths with J.S. Bach and other well-known baroque composers from the Leipzig area. SHU students in the group are oboist Alma Podoletz, and bassoonists Madilyn Perleberg and Angelina Brennsteiner. Pianist, Austin An, a student of member Edward M. Kuhn, Jr., will perform the music of two very different time periods on Friday evening. Nikolai Kapustin, a Soviet composer of Russian-Jewish descent, was born in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, in the same year as Silvestrov.  Prelude, Op. 53, No. 23 in Jazz Style, represents the composer’s favorite genre of music.  Austin will then turn back time to the classical period, and play the 1^st movement of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 17, nicknamed “The Tempest.”

January 27, 2023 – Student Recital – Campana Chapel

The Friday Evening Music Club of the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra is pleased to announce our annual student recital, to be held will be held on Friday, January 27 at 7:30p.m. at the Campana Chapel and Lecture Hall on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg (UPG). The recital will feature students of the following FEMC members: Michele Boulet, John V. Kulik and Dan Parasky.

We are very excited to be presenting our first live student recital held at Campana Chapel since January, 2020, just before live concerts shut down. This is also our first student event since coming under the umbrella of the Westmoreland Symphony!

Pianists performing include Mark Matthews (Burgmuller/Bastien), Johan Paul (Mozart/Faber), Bilgehan Akdeniz (Bach/Faber), Levi Pecorari (Haydn/Snell), James Georgescu (Latour/Faber), and Praneel Varshney (Gershwin/Chopin), all students of Mr. Kulik.

Flute students of Mr. Parasky, including Elsa Bandli (Coleman), Nia Hanington (Beeftink), and Anna Qin (Chaminade), will be accompanied by Matt Klumpp. Flutist Emma Jones, (Mendelssohn) studies with her duet partner, Ms. Boulet. Composers represented are listed in parentheses.

Admission is free to club members and voluntary donations are accepted from non-members at the door. All are invited to a reception following the recital.

American Music Month
Friday, November 18, 2022 at the First United Methodist Church of Greensburg

This recital will feature music by six American composers, plus a movement from Antonín Dvorák’s American String Quartet, which was written while the Bohemian composer was vacationing in Spillville, Iowa. Performing the Dvorák is the Barclay String Quartet, which includes violinists Natalie Kasievich and Lauren Rigby, violist Jason Xia and cellist Jeffrey Borrebach.

Pianist Beverly Hritz will play “A Hermit Thrush at Morn” Op. 92, No. 2 by Amy Beach.

Savannah Simeone, mezzo soprano, will sing three songs, each by a different American composer: “I felt a funeral in my brain” by Aaron Copland, using poetry of Emily Dickinson; “The Black Swan” from The Medium, by Gian Carlo Menotti, and Judith Cloud’s “Alone” with poetry by Edgar Allan Poe. Baritone Marc Tourre will sing “Early in the Morning” by Ned Rorem and “Come Ready and See Me” by Richard Hundley. Collaborating with both will be pianist Sylvia Andrae.

Admission is free to club members and voluntary donations are accepted from non-members at the door.  All are invited to a reception following the recital.

Friday, September 23, 2022 Season Opener at Campana Chapel

The Friday Evening Music Club of the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra returns to Campana Chapel at the University of Pittsburgh – Greensburg Campus on Friday, September 23 at 7:30 p.m.

Members Christina Andrae, flute and Sylvia Andrae, piano, will present a delightful five-movement work by Academy Award-winning Italian composer, Nino Rota. New member, oboist Louise Daniels, will perform Seven Bagatelles for Solo Oboe by prolific English composer Gordon Jacob.

Showcasing the flute family from piccolo to bass in Victor Herbert’s Italian Street Song, Flute Cocktail, will also present a wonderful arrangement of Three Slavonic Dances from Dvorak’s Op. 46 & 72, with pianist Ruth Poscich. Comprised of present and former FEMC members and friends, the flute choir includes Ms. Andrae, Grace Collier, Julia Gray, Chuck Kauric, Joan Kotjarapoglus, Leslie Nemeth, Linda Urbani and Theresa Vanden Berk, conducted by Michele Boulet. 

Admission is free to club members and voluntary donations are accepted from non-members at the door. Pitt-Greensburg does not currently require masks indoors, though this is subject to change as case levels may change in the county; FEMC is mask-friendly to all who chose to wear one. All are invited to a reception following the recital.

• September 23, 2022 – Season Opener – Campana Chapel
• November 18, 2022 – American Music Month – First United Methodist Church
• January 27, 2023 – Student Recital – Campana Chapel
• March 24, 2023 – Spring Breaks – Campana Chapel
• April 28, 2023 – Season Finale – Campana Chapel

Venues

First United Methodist Church: 15 E 2nd St, Greensburg, PA 15601
University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg – Campana Chapel: 150 Finoli Dr, Greensburg, PA 15601 University of Pittsburgh Greensburg Webpage | PDF Map

Past Recitals

• May 20, 2022 – Tutti Flutti – This month featured six flutists, six pianists, and a rhythm section of guest Seton Hill graduates: Lindsey Lamagna, traps and Teddy DiSanti, bass. This team performed French pianist/composer Claude Bolling’s popular Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio, which he wrote for flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal. Flute/piano duos performed the 7-part suite, and included members Christina Andrae, Michele Boulet, Nina Edgar and Joan Kotjarapoglus, and guests Grace Collier and Chuck Kauric on flute; pianists were members Sylvia Andrae, Hazel Braun, Beverly Hritz, Matt Klumpp and John Kulik, with guest Matt Diesel. The Suite’s 7 movements are: Baroque and Blue, Sentimentale, Javanaise, Fugace, Irlandaise, Versatile (for flute and bass flute!) and Veloce. Opening the program was a work composed by member Morrie Brand. His Flute Concerto will be premiered by dedicatee Evelyn Markle, with Matt Klumpp on piano.
• April 29, 2022 –  April in Paris – Pianist Dr. T. J. Maroon performed the first movement of Debussy’s wonderful Suite Bergamasque. Mezzo-soprano Savannah Simeone presented 20th-century works by Judith Cloud, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Benjamin Britten. Guest soprano Mary Vanden Berk took us on a historical tour, performing music from the 12th, 19th, and 21st centuries, featuring composers Hildegard von Bingen, Vincenzo Bellini, and Philippe Rombi. Former principal trumpeter of the WSO’s youth orchestra Christopher Cox performed the first movement of the famous Hummel Trumpet Concerto and the Morceau de Concert by J.C. Pennequin.
• February 25, 2022  – Organ Highlights – Featured this month were our Mildred Gardner Scholarship Winner, Kaitlyn Dotson, a Franklin Regional senior, who will be majoring in flute performance this fall. Kaitlyn and pianist Matt Klumpp performed Fauré’s short, beautiful Morceau de Concours, written for the sight-reading exam at the Paris Conservatory in 1896, which they followed with the first movement of Prokofiev’s blockbuster Flute Sonata, composed during WWII. New member, mezzo-soprano Savannah Simeone, accompanied by Josie Merlino, sang Erbarme dich, mein Gott, um meiner Zähren Willen! from St. Matthew Passion by J.S. Bach and King David, by Herbert Howells. Both of these composers were organists. Matt Klumpp closed the program at the organ, with Suite Gothique, French composer, Léon Boëllmann’s best-known composition for organ.
• November 19, 2021 –  American Music Month
• October 22, 2021 – Season Opener – Autumn Leaves