Clark College Orchestra Presents "Some R and R"
VANCOUVER, Wash. - The Clark College Orchestra under the direction of Music Director/Conductor Donald Appert will present its Spring Concert on Sunday, June 15, at 7:30 p.m. in the Royal Durst Theatre of the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics. Entitled "Some R and R," the concert opens with Ravel's La Valse and finishes with Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3. Gregory Partain will be the piano soloist. Also on the program is the U.S. premiere of Nara Variations by Donald Appert. This work for string orchestra was inspired by a trip to Japan in January of 2007 and premiered by the Ashiya Chamber Orchestra in Kobe, Japan on December 28, 2007. The concert is free and open to the public. Donations to the Orchestra Fund will be accepted at the door. The Royal Durst Theatre is located at 3101 Main Street in Vancouver.
Originally a native of the Pacific Northwest, Gregory Partain has appeared as recitalist, chamber musician, and concerto soloist throughout the United States and has performed overseas in Poland, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Russia, and Greece in his twenty years on the professional concert stage. In 1986, he was the national winner of the KMS Resident Artist Competition in Seattle, then won first prize in the Memphis Beethoven Piano Sonata Competition, second prize in the International Bartok-Kabalevsky Competition in Virginia, and was a finalist in the Concert Artists Guild New York Competition. He has also won honors in the San Antonio International Piano Competition and is a laureate of the Beethoven Foundation Auditions in Indianapolis. Partain's most recent concerto appearances took place in Yaroslavl, Russia and Athens, Greece, where he performed the Rachmaninoff second concerto with orchestras of those cities. He has also appeared with the Seattle Symphony, the Eugene Oregon Symphony, and the Sunriver and Peter Britt summer festivals, and the Clark College Orchestra in Vancouver, performing concerti by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Saint-Saens, Bartok, Prokofieff, and Gorecki. Partain earned his B.M. from the University of Washington and M.M. and doctoral degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently Professor of Music at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.