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22 January 2008

Music at the Museum Features Voice & Guitar Concert

Enjoy the Music at the Museum Series' opening concert at the Anniston Museum of Natural History on Sunday, January 27th at 3:00 p.m. The series, under the direction of JSU's Dr. Wendy Faughn, will open with a voice and guitar concert by Christina Howell and Brian Luckett.

Serving on the faculty of Emory University, Christina and Brian will share the special repertoire for this intimate and powerful combination. Emory voice faculty member Christina Howell and Director of the Emory Guitar Ensemble Brian Luckett explore music written for this pairing.

Soprano Christina Howell has won numerous awards for her singing including the Max Berman Opera Prize, The Boris Goldovsky Award for excellence in Operatic Acting and artist awards from the National Association of Teachers of Singing.  Ms. Howell was a two-time district winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Council District Auditions, a semi-finalist in the National Stewart Awards and winner of the Charlotte Opera Guild Vocal Competition.

Operatic credits include Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, Gilda in Rigoletto, Pamina in The Magic Flute, and Constance in Les Dialogues des Carmelites.  Equally at home on the concert stage, Ms. Howell has received acclaim for performances in Handel’s Messiah, Requiems of Mozart and Fauré, Respighi's Laud to the Nativity, and others.  In chamber works, Ms. Howell has performed with the Emory Chamber Music Ensemble, Brevard Chamber Series, Piccolo Spoleto Festival and Cleveland Chamber Ensemble among others. Recent performance credits include filming of Pulitzer Prize winning Robert Ward’s opera Roman Fever for South Carolina Educational Television.

Dr. Howell received her Bachelor of Music degree from Furman University, Master of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of South Carolina.  Dr. Howell is a member of the music honor society Pi Kappa Lambda and the music fraternity Mu Phi Epsilon. She currently teaches applied voice and diction at Emory University and teaches privately in Atlanta, Georgia. (Information cited from www.music.emory.edu/faculty/howell.html.)

Classical guitarist Brian Luckett has performed in solo and chamber music recitals throughout the United States. His post graduate work emphasized chamber music equally with solo repertoire and he has continued down this same path in his professional career with a particular interest in contemporary solo and chamber repertoire. Recent performances have paired him with guitarist Eliot Fisk and flutist Carl Hall. Other recent highlights include performances on the Schwartz Center Opening Festival, the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta's Noontime Series and Family Concert Series and numerous solo and chamber recitals at Emory and Agnes Scott College.

Brian has been featured in many programs on both NPR and Minnesota Public Radio and has premiered several new works for the guitar including a concerto and several large chamber works. His debut solo CD, Serenades of the Unicorn, features the music of Einojuhani Rautavaara and Nikita Koshkin.

Together with flutist and composer Nicole Randall, Brian recently founded DuoATL. The duo is intent on exploring the wealth of music from the 20th and 21st centuries written for this pairing while creating new additions to the repertoire through commissions and original works.

In addition to performing, Brian is an occasional composer and has had several original guitar works premiered in Cincinnati, Minneapolis and Atlanta. He has writen for solo guitar as well as guitar and flute, guitar and violin and guitar ensembles. His Doctoral thesis, Ensemble Workbook: for Beginning to Intermediate Guitarists, contains twenty-seven brief works for guitar trio and quartet.

Brian earned his Bachelor's degree from the University of Louisville's School of Music where he studied with Douglas Jones and was awarded the institution's first guitar performance degree. He was then awarded a full scholarship to pursue a Master's degree at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music with Segovia student and renowned guitar pedagogue, Clare Callahan. At CCM, Brian also served as Ms. Callahan's teaching assistant. Upon completion of his Master's degree, he relocated to Minneapolis where he earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the University of Minnesota, where he studied with acclaimed guitarist and composer Jeffrey Van. At the U of M, Brian served as Mr. Van's teaching assistant for four years. Brian has also studied in several classes with the Italian guitar virtuoso Oscar Ghiglia and has participated in classes with Christopher Parkening, Scott Tennant and David Tannenbaum.

Brian is on faculty of Emory University and Agnes Scott College.

(Information cited from www.music.emory.edu/faculty/luckett.html.)

The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call 782-8258.



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