Violin soloist to perform with IVSO

May 12 concert will be the final appearance of conductor Lucia Matos

Staff
Posted 5/2/18

OGLESBY - Conductor Lucia Matos will lead the Illinois Valley Symphony Orchestra in its 2017–18 season finale at 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 12 at IVCC’s Mary Margaret Weeg Cultural Centre in Oglesby.

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Violin soloist to perform with IVSO

May 12 concert will be the final appearance of conductor Lucia Matos

Posted

Kam-Lung Cheng

OGLESBY - Conductor Lucia Matos will lead the Illinois Valley Symphony Orchestra in its 2017–18 season finale at 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 12 at IVCC’s Mary Margaret Weeg Cultural Centre in Oglesby.

The concert will feature music by Brahms and Rachmaninoff and will mark the final appearance of popular conductor, Lucia Matos, with the IVSO. A reception honoring Matos and the evening’s soloist will follow the concert in room CTC 124, hosted by the IVS Guild and IVSO Board.

Featured soloist Kam-Lung Cheng will perform the Brahms Concerto for Violin in D Major, considered by some to be the greatest of all violin concertos. Cheng was born in Beijing, China to a musical family. He began his violin study at the age of 7 with his father, who was a violin professor at the Central Conservatory of Music of China. His family later emigrated to Hong Kong, where he made his first television appearance.

Cheng received a diploma from the University of Freiburg in Germany and was then invited by Yehudi Menuhin to attend the International Menuhin Music Academy in Gstaad, Switzerland, where he studied with Yehudi Menuhin himself. He earned a solo and chamber music diploma from Utrecht Conservatory in 1987. He then made a successful appearance on Dutch television playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and giving a recital at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

In 2017, Cheng was appointed concertmaster of the Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra. Since 2007, he has appeared frequently as a soloist on Chinese music stages and has served as guest conductor and soloist for several major orchestras in China.

The concert program will include “The Isle of the Dead” by Rachmaninoff. This haunting piece was inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s painting, Isle of the Dead, which Rachmaninoff saw in Paris in 1907. The orchestra will also perform Sibelius’s “Valse Romantique,” which was composed in 1911 as the second part of a two-set suite.

Admission to the concert is by season membership or individual ticket, available online at ivso.org or at the door. Students K-12 are admitted free. The auditorium is accessible.

This concert is sponsored by Illinois Cement Company and the Blouke and Marianne Carus Foundation and partially sponsored by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. Season sponsors are Ning Communications and Ottawa Radio.