Two college music instructors are putting their teaching caps aside for a moment to flex their talents as professional musicians during a faculty recital at Laredo Community College on Monday, Nov. 7.
Violist Luis Casal and pianist Dr. Mikolaj Górecki will be the featured performers of the recital, which starts at 7:30 p.m. in the Guadalupe and Lilia Martinez Fine Arts Center theater. Admission is free to the community.
The duo will perform an exciting array of musical selections, including Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Sonate No. 3 for viola de gamba and harpsichord BWV 1029,” Béla Bartók’s “Concerto for viola and orchestra” and Philippe Hersant’s “Pavane pour alto solo.”
The program also will include the performance of “Six little piano pieces Op. 19” by Arnold Schoenberg, “Intermezzo in A Major, Op. 118” by Johannes Brahms and “Sonata for viola and piano, Op. 147” by Dmitri Shostakovich.
CASAL
Casal is one of the newest instructors in the Music and Dance Department at LCC. He joined the college this fall to teach violin and viola at LCC. He also is the principal violist for the Laredo Philharmonic Orchestra.
A native of Panama, Casal is regarded as one of that country’s leading violinists and violists who is well known on both art and folk music stages.
Casal began his violin studies at age 6 and in 1992 moved to the U.S. to study with scholarship at the University of Florida, where he graduated with honors. He continued his studies at Carnegie Mellon University, where he received two master’s degrees, including one in violin and one in viola.
Later on, Casal achieved a Performance Diploma from Indiana University and is presently completing his doctoral studies at the University of Oklahoma.
Aside from serving as a violin teacher in 1996 at the National Institute of Music in Panama, and as a viola teacher in the 2003 Oklahoma Arts Institute Summer Festival in Quartz Mountain, Okla., Casal has given lectures and master classes at the School of Fine Arts of the National University of Panama and at the Universidad Santa María la Antigua (Catholic University of Panama).
Casal has represented his country in events held in Japan, England, Paris, Italy, and the United States.
Casal’s interest in Panamanian folk music led him to record a CD with Panamanian folk guitarist Gustavo Salamín in 2002.
GÓRECKI
Dr. Górecki has been a faculty of the LCC Music and Dance department for several years.
Born in Katowice, Poland in 1971, Górecki began studying the violin at six; a year later he began studying the piano. In 1990, after graduating from the Secondary School of Music's piano class, he began to study composition at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice under his father, composer Henryk Mikolaj Górecki.
Having graduated with honors from the academy, Górecki was granted a double scholarship by the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada, where he stayed for a year, honing his compositional technique. In 1998, he began studying at the prestigious School of Music at the University of Indiana, where he was awarded his doctoral degree in musical composition in May 2000.
Górecki's prizes and distinctions include a 1992 commission by the International Music Corporation of Tokyo, Japan, to compose two piano concertos in the style of Chopin; and in 1998 the first prize of the Young Composers Competition in Bielsko-Biala, Poland. He has been commissioned for the Katowice Orchestra in Poland. Gorecki's works include compositions for piano and orchestra, string quartets and quintets, among others.
For more information about the faculty recital, contact the LCC Music and Dance Department at 721-5330.
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