By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Pro Musica sends university music students around the world so they can learn and perform. Sometimes those trips send them far from home; sometimes they bring them home.
That was the case with Chi-Him Chik. Pro Musica help fund the Bowling Green State University student’s attendance at a music festival in his native Hong Kong. While there, the saxophonist said, he met composers and arranged to commission new pieces for saxophone.
Josh Wang
That will mean more concerts back home both in Hong Kong and in Bowling Green.
Chik was one of five students who performed Sunday afternoon in the atrium of the Wood County Public Library in the annual Coffee & Classics concert. He played “The Jungle,” a contemporary piece for solo saxophone by Christian Lauba.
Pianist Josh Wang, who performed two preludes by Sergei Rachmaninoff, also used a Pro Musica grant to travel home. In his case, Wisconsin. He put together a concert tour. Not only did it give him a chance to perform his repertoire in concert several times in a compressed period of time but it gave him experience booking and promoting the tour. It went so well, Wang said, that several venues have asked him to return.
Singer Suzanne Pergal traveled to Nice, France, for a summer academy. For her, to be taught by French teachers and be surrounded by native French speakers was invaluable. Sunday, though, she sang in English – four selections from “Ten Blake Songs” by Ralph Vaughan Williams, performed with Robert Ragoonanan on oboe.
Suzanne Pergal & Robert Ragoonanan
Caleb Georges performed a prelude from a suite by J.S. Bach on viola. He said that Pro Musica funding helped him attend a chamber music festival in California where he was able study with internationally known musicians.
Pianist Yuefeng Liu opened the concert with a sonata by Alexander Scriabin. She said she used her grant Music Teachers National Association national competition.
The performers were among the most recent that Pro Musica has assisted in its 30-plus years. The group of more than 300 alumni, family, faculty, friends and students uses all its funds to support student activities as well as http://bgindependentmedia.org/2016/02/22/ohioans-turn-coming-to-pick-presidential-favorites/ o sponsor the awards at the Douglas Wayland Chamber Music Competition in spring. For information, visit: https://www.bgsu.edu/musical-arts/college-information/pro-musica.html
