PRINCETON, NJ Restaurant Dining Guide Announcement

Princeton University Orchestra Features Electric Guitar Concerto premiere, Competition Winners March 4 & 5, 2011

The Princeton University Orchestra and Michael Pratt will present two evenings of student winners of the University Concerto Competition on concerts Friday March 4 and Saturday March 5 at 8:00 pm. in Richardson Auditorium.  Also featured on the concerts will the premiere of new work for Electric Guitar and Orchestra with the composer as soloist.

Mark Dancigers, a fourth year fellow in Princeton’s Ph.D. program in Composition will be the soloist in his own new work, “Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra”. Michael Pratt commented, “Mark is part of a brilliant new generation of composers to blend music from the club and the concert hall into a vibrant stream that is revitalizing much of our concert life. Plus, he is a virtuoso guitarist.”

Jessica Anastasio ’11, a flutist who won the Concerto Competition in 2009, will play Mozart’s “Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in D major”. Yoon Won Song ’11 will play Sibelius’” Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor”.

“The concerti by Mozart and Sibelius are among the most beloved works for each of their respective instruments. Jessica and Yoon are in so many ways representative of Princeton’s musical stars—both engaged in rigorous academic courses of studies, yet both achieving an exceptional level of musical accomplishment. They both will be pursuing graduate study in music performance”, concluded Pratt.

One may purchase tickets ($15 general, $13 seniors, $8 students) by calling 609-258-9220 or ordering online at www.princeton.edu/utickets.

Biographies for the featured students follow:

Jessica Anastasio is a senior majoring in Classics and pursuing the Musical Performance certificate. In the summer of 2007 she performed at the Kennedy Center as a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and is now an Emerging Artist for Miyazawa Flutes, Inc. She has performed at numerous summer festivals, including the Tanglewood Music Center (where she was the youngest student ever to attend), the Aspen Music Festival and the National Repertory Orchestra where she has performed under the batons of James Levine, Michael Tilson Thomas, Christoph von Dohnanyi and Rafael Frübeck de Burgos. She is a substitute flutist for the Kansas City Philharmonic, the San Antonio Symphony and the New World Symphony. She studies flute at Princeton with Jayn Rosenfeld, Principal Flute of the Princeton Symphony.

Yoon Won Song is a senior where she is pursuing a degree in Economics and is

Co-concertmaster of the Princeton University Orchestra. She has performed in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Japan, and Korea, as well as in the United States. In March 2004, she became the third prize laureate of the renowned International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians. In addition, she has received many awards including first prizes at the Daily Korea Times competition, the Music Journal Competition, and the Seoul Symphony Orchestra Competition. Her teachers include Dorothy DeLay, Hyo Kang, Stefan Milenkovich, Nam-Yun Kim, and, at Princeton, Anna Lim.

Described by the New York Times as "entrancing" and "rich in beguiling timbres", the music of Mark Dancigers has been commissioned and performed by orchestras and chamber ensembles across the United States. An active electric guitarist and advocate for new music, he has premiered over 60 new works for the electric guitar across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and been hailed as "one of indie-classical's top shredders" by Seth Walls of Newsweek. He studied at Yale University and the Yale School of Music, where his principal teachers included Martin Bresnick, Ezra Laderman, Kathryn Alexander, Aaron Jay Kernis, Matthew Suttor, and John Halle.. He is currently completing his doctorate in music composition at Princeton University under Steven Mackey.