Local musicians and sisters Willa and Ledah Finck will present a recital of classical violin music on Saturday, May 23 at 5:00 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the Broyhill Music Center at Appalachian State University. The recital is free and open to the public. The sisters will perform masterworks by Bach, Beethoven, Sibelius and Ysaÿe. The program will also include a violin duet composed by Ledah Finck. Piano accompaniment will be provided by Nancy Whelan of Durham.
In addition to playing for many years as members of the regional Celtic band The Forget-Me-Nots, both sisters played in the Watauga High School orchestra and the ASU Symphony and Philharmonia orchestras.
Willa Finck studied at the UNC School of the Arts during her senior year of high school, where her teachers were Sarah Johnson and Ida Bieler. She recently completed her first year at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, where she studies with Mikhail Kopelman. In summer 2014, Willa traveled as a member of Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra. The orchestra made eight appearances across the United States, playing in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood and the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The tour also included a stop at the Schaefer Center in Boone. In 2014, Willa won first place in the Asheville Symphony Young Artist Competition, leading to a solo performance with the Symphony in November 2014. She also won first place in the Senior Division of the 2014 Kathleen Price and Joseph M. Bryan Youth Concerto Competition in Raleigh. As first-place winner of that competition, Willa will perform the first movement of the Sibelius Violin Concerto in a special donors’ concert with the NC Symphony on May 27.
Ledah Finck also attended the UNC School of the Arts for her senior year of high school, studying with Kevin Lawrence. In 2012 she was awarded one of four Kenan Music Scholarships to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she worked with Richard Luby and Jennifer Curtis. In 2014, Ledah transferred to the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she now studies violin with Herbert Greenberg and composition with Judah Adashi. In recent years Ledah has attended several summer music programs, including the Eastern Music Festival, the Aspen Summer Festival and the Yellow Barn program in Vermont, which she attended as a violinist and later as a composition student. This summer, Ledah has been accepted at Kneisel Hall, a full-scholarship chamber music school in Maine. Ledah’s original compositions have been performed at the Peabody Conservatory, the Yellow Barn Music Festival and at UNC Chapel Hill. The Baltimore Choral Society recently selected one of her choral compositions as a winner in its annual competition. The piece will be performed in summer 2015.
You must be logged in to post a comment.