Eastman School of Music faculty and alumni will gather on Saturday, Oct. 24, to present a “Celebration of the Life of Lynn Blakeslee.” Scheduled for 3 p.m. in the School’s Hatch Recital Hall, the event will feature recordings of the internationally acclaimed violinist with the ensemble Streichquintett Mozarteum, in which she was the first violinist, and from a performance with pianist Russell Miller in Hatch Recital Hall.
Professor Blakeslee, who taught at Eastman from 1987 until she retired in 2013, died in August at the age of 75. She had been first violinist of the Streichquintet Mozarteum for 15 years and with the ensemble ran a summer chamber music festival and violin workshop in Austria. She was a soloist with many orchestras, among them the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Wiener Ton-Künstler, and the Wiener Kammerorchester. A member of Die Wiener Solisten for many years, Professor Blakeslee was also concertmaster at Theater an der Wien and a member of the Wiener Kontrapunkte and the Deutsche Bach Solisten. While heading Chamber Music at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, she was also concertmaster of the chamber orchestra Cis.
Professor Blakeslee’s teaching credits include the Mozarteum in Salzburg and its Summer Akademie, the Bruckner Konservatorium in Linz, Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, the Euro Music Academy Leipzig, the Casals Festival in Prades, France, the Sulzach-Rosenberg International Music Festival, and master classes at the Papageno School in Villarica, Chile.
Eastman faculty members who will perform in the tribute concert are violinists Mikhail Kopelman, Federico Agostini, Bin Huang, and Janet Milnes; violists Carol Rodland and George Taylor; cellists Steven Doane and Alan Harris; double bassist James VanDemark; harpist Kathleen Bride; and pianists Rebecca Penneys, Russell Miller, and Anna Gourfinkel.
Performers also include Eastman alumni Neil Miller, viola, and William Knuth, Elana Herman, Vilma Perkiomaki, Jonathan Ong, Ece Dolu, Ainur Zabenova, Adrian Demian, Adrienne Caravan, Koki Tanaka, and Kim Durflinger, violin; with guest artists Cherry Rhodes, piano, and Stefan Reuss, cello.
The concert program includes works by Dvořák, Scarlatti, Mozart, Grandjany, Mendelssohn, Gluck, and Debussy.
Contributions in honor of Professor Blakeslee may be made to the Lynn Blakeslee Scholarship at the Eastman School of Music and sent to the Office of Advancement, Eastman School of Music, 26 Gibbs St., Rochester, NY 14604
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Calendar Listing:
Saturday, October 24
Celebration of the Life of Lynn Blakeslee. Tribute concert by Eastman School of Music faculty and alumni and guest artist/
3 p.m.
Hatch Recital Hall, 433 East Main St.
Free