Appalachian Symphony Orchestra and soloists perform Feb. 28

Dr. Chung Park conducts the Appalachian Symphony Orchestra Thursday, Feb. 28, at 8 p.m. in Broyhill Music Center’s Rosen Concert Hall at Appalachian State University.

Student soloists Kara Kowlaski, Paulina Villarreal and Molly Reid will perform with the orchestra.
Admission is free, and the public is invited.

The evening’s program opens with the symphony performing Rossini’s overture to “The Thieving Magpie.”

Kowalski will be featured on the first movement of Henri Tomasi’s “Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra.” Mezzo-soprano Villarreal is the soloist for “Cruda Sorte” from Rossini’s “L’Italiana in Algeri” and Leonard Bernstein’s “I am Easily Assimilated” from “Candide.” Reid will be featured on Maurice Ravel’s “Piano Concerto in G.”


About the Conductor

Park is director of orchestral activities in Appalachian’s Hayes School of Music. He conducts the Appalachian Symphony Orchestra, Appalachian Philharmonic and Appalachian Opera Theatre. He is an assistant professor of music at Appalachian. He earned his doctoral degree of musical arts in instrumental conducting at the University of Miami. He also has two master’s degrees: one in viola performance from Western Michigan University and one in orchestral conducting from the University of Illinois. Park received his undergraduate degree in viola performance from the Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University.


About the soloists

Kowalski is in her junior year at Appalachian, where she is pursuing a bachelor of music in saxophone performance and music education, studying under Scott Kallestad. She attended high school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Kowalski is a N.C. Teaching Fellow, recipient of the Hayes School of Music Good Student Scholarship and former recipient of the D’Addario Music Foundation Scholarship for attendance at the Berklee Summer Performance Program.

She plays in the Phasma Saxophone Quartet, the Appalachian Wind Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble, all based in the Hayes School of Music. She also is a member of the North American Saxophone Alliance, National Association for Music Educations and Jazz Educators Network.

Mezzo-soprano Villarreal has appeared as a soloist in opera productions, scenes programs, choral activities and song recitals in the Eastern United States and Mexico. She is pursuing a bachelor of music in performance at Appalachian, studying voice with Dr. Julia Pedigo. A native of Mexico, Villarreal has placed in the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) regional singing competitions. She is the 2013 recipient of the Honors Voice Recital at the Hayes School of Music and has received the PRISM, Hodgkins and Pedigo voice scholarships.

For the past two summers, Villarreal has toured with Artescenica A.C in northern Mexico, a program dedicated to excellence in opera.

Pianist Reid began her musical studies with her parents who are both accomplished classical pianists. She currently is a piano student of Dr. Rodney Reynerson in the Hayes School of Music. In addition to performance studies, she works as a theory guru in the music school’s tutoring lab and is an undergraduate instructional assistant.

Additionally, she is working on an independent study that focuses on analysis of 20th-century piano music. Her research on Ravel’s “Piano Concerto in G” was chosen for presentation at the upcoming National Conference on Undergraduate Research in LaCrosse, Wis., in April. Reid is a recipient of the AppalPIE Scholarship and is completing a bachelor of music degree in piano performance. She plans to obtain graduate degrees in both piano performance and music theory.