Ars Nostra Plays Merkin Concert Hall Tonight, 5/15

Ars Nostra, the new music ensemble in residence at Tampa's University of South Florida's College of The Arts, will fete composer Max Lifchitz with a concert featuring his vocal and instrumental works. The event will take place tonight, May 15 at 8 PM and will be held at New York City's Merkin Concert Hall (129 West 67th St). For ticket purchases and availability please contact the box office at (212) 501-3330.

Ars Nostra is devoted to promoting "our arts" by performing music by living composers whose works draw upon diverse and rich resources including ancient anthropological sources, multiple ethnicities, and well-established Western arts traditions.

Active as composer and performer, Max Lifchitz began his musical education was in his native México City before relocating to New York in 1966. Trained at The Juilliard School and Harvard University, Lifchitz has earned grants and fellowships from the ASCAP, Ford and Guggenheim Foundations, the NYS Council on the Art; and the NEA. He received the first prize in the 1976 Gaudeamus Competition for Performers of Contemporary Music held in Holland. Many of his compositions – including his Canto de Paz and the forty-plus series of works titled Yellow Ribbons – reveal his reactions to the turbulence of recent times as well as a deep-rooted yearning for a peaceful world. His Piano Silhouettes was written especially for the occasion in collaboration with visual artist Elisabeth Condon of University of South Florida, manifesting a direct reflection to the ensemble's theme "Ars Nostra."

The members of the ensemble – currently on the music faculty at the University of South Florida's College of The Arts are:
Soprano Kyoung Cho has appeared on television broadcasts in China and Korea. She is a graduate of Yale University and the Manhattan School of Music.

Jay Coble, trumpeter served as principal trumpet at the 2010 Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria and for the Ambassador Brass tour of China. He has recorded several compact discs featuring jazz, contemporary and classical works for trumpet.

Clarinetist Calvin T. Falwell was hailed as "a performer of skill and virtuosity" by the World Clarinet Alliance. He has performed solo recitals in South America, China, and Europe. He is both a Selmer Paris and Rico performing artist.

Pianist Sang-Hie Lee, piano, has performed throughout the US, Europe, Canada and Asia. An active researcher on pianists' biomechanics, her many articles appear in Medical Problems of Performing Artists, Psychomusicology, Medicine des Arts, and the American Music Teacher.

Kim S. McCormick, flute, is a Yamaha Artist who has performed throughout the US as well as in Korea, South America, Canada and Europe. Her recordings of new works have received high critical acclaim in the American Record Guide, Gramophone and Fanfare Magazines.

Percussionist Robert M. McCormick, percussion, received the prestigious 2010 Jerome Krivanek Distinguished Teacher Award from the University of South Florida, and was named the 2005 Music Educator of the year by the Florida Music Educators Association. He served as principal percussionist of the Florida Orchestra for 20 years.

The event is possible with the assistance of a Creative Scholarship grant from the University of South Florida.

For further information, visit http://www.kaufman-center.org/mch/event/ars-nostra-performs-the-music-of-max-lifchitz