Friday Evening Music Club
2023-2024 Recital Dates
February 23, 2024 -7:30 p.m.- Early Music/Organ Music (First United Methodist Church)
The FEMC is excited to celebrate Black History Month by featuring works by two African American composers. Christine Loughran will perform a short organ work, Adoration, by Florence Price, the first African American woman to have a composition premiered by an American orchestra (Chicago Symphony – 1933). Ms. Loughran will be joined by Beverly Hritz in piano duo arrangements of Solace and Maple Leaf Rag, penned by Scott Joplin, the most famous composer of the first truly American musical genre – Ragtime!
Continuing the American music portion of the recital, organist Sylvia Andrae will play Elegy, by composer and organist, James Biery. Flutist Christina Andrae will join her mother in performing Herdsmaiden’s Dance by Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén.
Featured this month is FEMC’s Mildred Gardner Scholarship runner-up, harpist Juliana Matteo, a senior at Penn-Trafford High School, who is planning to major in harp in the Fall. The winner of the scholarship competition will be performing at the final recital of the season, in April.
Ariana and Ilana Aranovich, sisters and members of the youth orchestra (WYSO), will present a selection from their violin duo repertoire; Ilana, WYSO concertmaster and winner of this past month’s Young Artists Competition (Level I), will also play the Adagio movement of Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, BWV 1001.
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.
Next Recital:
April 26, 2024 – Season Finale (Campana Chapel)
Join the Club Today!
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.
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
Friday, November 17th at 7:30 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church of Greensburg, 15 E. 2nd Street (across from the YMCA).
This recital will feature music by a mix of composers, including some American works. Opening the program will be an aria from Bach cantata #8, first performed on the 16th Sunday after Trinity in 1724. Marc Tourre, baritone, will sing the aria, Doch weichet, ihr tollen (But hence, you foolish, useless worries), with Michele Boulet playing the flute obbligato and pianist, Sylvia Andrae playing the orchestral reduction.
The music club has invited musicians to share the stage with our member performers this month:
Percussionist Lindsey Lamagna has chosen to showcase a piece by American percussionist, ethnomusicologist and composer, Eugene Novotney. The snare drum work incorporates many different timbres that can be produced using just one drum, incorporating various sticks and mallets.
William Jeffrey Jones, Minister of Music and organist at First Presbyterian Church, will perform some delightful organ music to close the program.
Admission is free to club members and voluntary donations are accepted from non-members at the door.
September 22, 2023 – Season Opener (Campana Chapel)
Members Dan Parasky, flute and Matt Klumpp, piano, will present pieces by American composers Eldin Burton (Sonatina for Flute and Piano) and Amanda Harberg (Feathers and Wax, which was inspired by the Greek myth of Icarus). Mr. Klumpp will also perform Prelude and Fugue in G major BWV 860 from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.
Members of Flute Cocktail will present “Evangeline and Gabriel” and “Paul Bunyan and His Blue Ox, Babe” from Catherine McMichael’s Legends from the Greenwood and an arrangement of Dizzy Fingers by Zez Confrey. Flute choir members include Grace Collier, Nina Edgar, Emma Jones, Beth Michael and Makaila Sunder, conducted by Michele Boulet.
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.
November 17, 2023 – American Music Month (First United Methodist Church)
January 26, 2024 – Student Recitals (Campana Chapel)
February 23, 2024 – Early Music/Organ Music (First United Methodist Church)
April 26, 2024 – Season Finale (Campana Chapel)
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.
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 1st 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.
