Concerto Concert to Feature Premier Student Soloists

Graduate student and marimbist Naoko Takada, soprano Sonia Rodriguez Bermejo ’01, and violinist Sara Hughes ’02 will be the featured soloists at the annual Ithaca College concerto concert, which will be held Saturday, March 3, at 8:15 p.m. in Ford Hall. The three soloists, winners of the music school’s annual concerto competition in January, will perform with the Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Grant Cooper. The concert is free and open to the public.

Takada will play Rosauro’s Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra, Rodriguez Bermejo will sing "Ah, forse è lui che l’anima" from Verdi’s La Traviata, and Hughes will play Mozart’s Concerto no. 5 in A for violin and orchestra. All three soloists will perform from memory.

The concert will also include the symphony orchestra playing Glière’s "Russian Sailors’ Dance" from Red Poppy and Respighi’s Festa Romana.

This year’s performance marks the 50th anniversary of the annual student concerto concert, which is held to showcase the School of Music’s premier soloists. Though there had been special senior solo recitals before 1951, that year was the first time the concerto program took place under its present name. The concerto competition is open to Ithaca College students who are enrolled for private lessons with a College faculty member during the semester of the competition. This year 21 students made it through the preliminary auditions and proceeded to the finals, where they performed their piece from memory for a seven-member faculty committee.

Naoko Takada was born in Tokyo and began studying marimba under Akiko Suzuki at the age of eight. In 1988 she performed with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and Tokyo Chamber Orchestra as a marimba soloist. She graduated cum laude from California State University, Northridge, where she won the CSUN Concerto Competition, Best Instrumentalist Prize, and Music Etude Endowment Prize. She currently is pursuing her master’s degree in percussion performance.

Sonia Rodriguez Bermejo comes to Ithaca from Las Palmas on Spain’s Grand Canary Island. She began studying music at the age of 8 and made her operatic debut at 12, performing the role of Bastienne in Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne. She completed four years of voice study at the Las Palmas Conservatory before coming to Ithaca College, where she is studying vocal performance and education. Her Ithaca College Theatre credits include Miss Wordworth in Britten’s Albert Herring and Drusilla in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, which will be performed in Hoerner Theatre from February 20 through February 25.

Sara Hughes, from Delmar, New York, began playing violin at age five. In high school she was a member of the Empire State Youth Orchestra, and she has been featured as a soloist with the Woodstock Chamber Players, with whom she performed Bach’s Double Violin Concerto. She was the principal second violin in the Ithaca Opera Association’s performance of The Marriage of Figaro. A performance/music education major, she is currently the concertmaster of the Ithaca College Chamber and Symphony Orchestras.

For more information call Alex Dippold in the School of Music at 274-3717.