A Recital for Cello and Piano Features Music Spanning Three Centuries
SHERMAN, TEXAS—The Austin College Music Department presents a Recital for Cello and Piano featuring Leslie Whelan, cello, and John McGinn, piano, in Wynne Chapel’s Clifford J. Grum Sanctuary, on Saturday, February 25, 2023, at 3 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
They will be performing selections from four classical composers whose lives and work span from the late-1600s through mid-1900s. The recital includes the four movements of “Sonata for Viola da Gamba in G Major, BWV 1027,” by Johann Sebastian Bach; “Sonata in G Minor, Op. 5 No. 2,” in two movements by Ludwig von Beethoven; “Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70,” by Robert Schumann, and “Six Studies in English Folksong,” by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Whelan has two roles with the Sherman Symphony Orchestra as cellist and Education Director that enable her to develop and take part in outreach programs for young people throughout north Texas. She is co-director and co-founder of the Austin College Summer Music Camp, which launched in 2022.
She has degrees in cello performance from Ithaca College and the University of Maryland and is a certified Suzuki instructor. Whelan has performed chamber music at such venues as the Kennedy Center and the Montreal Museum of Art, and orchestral performances at Lincoln Center and the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Ireland.
An associate professor of music at Austin College, John McGinn received his undergraduate music degree from Harvard University and his doctorate in composition from Stanford University. Among his teachers are such noted composers as Jonathan Harvey, Leon Kirchner and John Adams.
His works have won several honors and been performed at colleges and festivals nationwide. Recent solo piano works include “Without a Net” (2020) which he premiered at two College Music Society conferences and “Three Preludes” (2019) presented by Max Lifchitz at the National Opera Center in New York City. As an arranger, McGinn has created piano reductions of several large-scale works including John Adams’ opera Nixon in China for publication by Boosey & Hawkes.
As a pianist and keyboardist, McGinn has performed extensively and appeared on more than a dozen commercial recordings, including several recent CDs with The Shakespeare Concerts of MA, for whom he served as music director from 2003 through 2008