News and Events
By DIANA SHAMAN
Thanks to a generous $5,000 grant from State Senator Shirley L. Huntley, the Kew Gardens Community Center is presenting a series of lunch-time concerts with programs as varied as Hebrew and Yiddish classics and music from the Andes. All recitals are free-of-charge and all start at 1:00 p.m. Three programs have already taken place, but five more are scheduled and will take place in April, May and June. The Kew Gardens Community Center is a program of the Queens Community House.
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| The Schiller Quartet |
On Friday May 16th, Guillermo Guerrero will bring a performance of Andean music to the center in a program that includes a slide show on Andean life. Members of the audience will be invited to participate by trying their hand at playing on traditional Andean instruments that Mr. Guerrero will demonstrate. Mr. Guerrero, who was born in northern Peru, formed his group, Tahuantinsuyo, which translated means the four parts of the world, in 1973 after emigrating to the United States. His goal was to help preserve the traditional music of the lands of the Incas, which include Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Argentina and Chile. The group has since performed all over the world. As a solo performer, Mr. Guerrero has given numerous recitals, workshops and lectures to acquaint young and old with Andean music and its instruments.
The Argentine/American pianist and composer Cesar Vuksic and his group of musicians will be performing his original work, Queens Rhapsody, for the second time in two years at the Kew Gardens Community Center, with a performance on Friday June 6th. The work, for violin, clarinet, trombone, percussion and piano, along with narration, had its premiere performance at the Community Center in May 2006. It is a musical portrait and a hymn to the ethnic diversity and cultural vitality of Queens, recreating the borough’s many different musical styles including Tango, jazz, Klezmer, Calypso, Greek and Chinese music.
Russian and Jewish melodies including Hebrew and Yiddish classics are on the menu for the Thursday June 19th concert, which will feature Gennady Kupisok. Mr. Kupisok will be singing a medley of folk songs that he compiled for the Joleika, an ancient instrument with roots in rural Russia. He will also play light classical music. Mr. Kupisok has played in concert halls throughout Europe and the United States.
The concert series ends Friday, June 20th with a piano recital by Jane Leslie who will play a selection of her own compositions. Ms. Leslie holds degrees from The Julliard School and from the Manhattan School of Music. She is a member of the music faculty at Nassau Community College and has performed her original piano music at concerts throughout the New York City area.
The concert series began last December with a performance by Gail Archer, a singer. The other two were offered in March. On March 20th, The Schiller Quartet with Allan and Eleanor Schiller, violin; Denise Cridge, viola; and Amy Camus, cello, played Mozart, Bach, Dvorak, and light classics.
The Con Brio Ensemble, with Alexander Meshibovsky, violin, and Diana Mittler-Battipaglia, piano, performed on March 27th, offering additional chamber music that included Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Ravel and Franz Mittler. The Con Brio did not fall under Senator Huntley’s grant program but was sponsored separately by the Queens Council on the Arts, with public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.