THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
Faculty/Guest Artist Recital of
Natasha Farny, Cello Read Gainsford, Piano
Thursday, February 15, 2024 7:30 p.m. | Longmire Recital Hall
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All… Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers. Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance. Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
PROGRAM Unlocked, for Solo Cello (1999) I. Make me a Garment Lamentations: A Black Folk Song Suite for Solo Cello (1973 III. Calvary Ostinato Uno (2019)
Judith Weir (b. 1954) Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (b. 1932) Jorge Variego (b. 1975)
Suite for Violoncello Solo (1926) I. Preludio – Fantasia: Andante
Gaspar Cassadó (1897–1966)
Grāmata čellam (The Book) (1978) II. Pianissimo
Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946)
Sonata in D Major, Op. 102, No. 2 I. Allegro con brio II. Adagio con molto sentimento d’affetto III. Allegro fugato Dance of the Green Devil (1926) Allegro vivo
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Gaspar Cassadó
ABOUT THE ARTISTS Acclaimed as a “terrific cello soloist” and as having a “big, generous tone,” American cellist Natasha Farny performs frequently as a soloist and chamber musician. She has recorded a CD, French Music for Cello and Piano, on the Centaur label and Women’s Voices. Recent concerts include Arizona’s Del E. Webb Performing Arts Center, NYC’s Merkin Hall, and Colorado’s Strings Music Festival. She premiered Avner Dorman’s new Double Concerto for Cello, Piano, and Orchestra last year. Upcoming concerts in 2024 include appearances at Florida State University, Saugerties ProMusica, University of Albany Performing Arts Center, and a concerto performance with JoAnn Falletta at the Sewanee Music Center. Farny made her concerto debut at age 17 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and Yale College. After completing higher degrees at the Eastman School of Music and at the Juilliard School, she received a fellowship for study in Leipzig, Germany. While at Juilliard, Farny performed Dutilleux’s Tout un Monde Lointain with conductor Robert Spano and Olav Anton Thommessen’s world premiere, Through Reflection, with conductor Joel Sachs. Other concerto performances include collaborations with the Buffalo Philharmonic, Abilene (TX) Philharmonic, and the Greeley (CO) Symphony Orchestra, as well as many regional orchestras. Recent research interests entail music by women for cello. Farny published an article and has presented her work on female composers nationally and internationally. Farny is Professor of Cello at the School of Music at the State University of New York in Fredonia. A native of New Zealand, Read Gainsford began full-time music study with top piano teachers, Janetta MacStay and Bryan Sayer, before receiving a grant from the Woolf Fisher Trust and the top prize in the Television New Zealand Young Musician of the Year. Gainsford then relocated to London, where he studied privately with Brigitte Wild, a protégée of Claudio Arrau, before winning a place in the Advanced Solo Studies course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he studied with Joan Havill, graduating with the prestigious Concert Recital Diploma (premier prix). Gainsford has performed widely in the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as solo recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician. He has made successful solo debuts at the Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and has performed in many other venues, including the John F. Kennedy Center, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Barbican Centre, Fairfield Halls, Birmingham Town Hall and St-Martin-in-the-Fields. He has recorded for the Amoris label, BBC Radio Three, Radio New Zealand’s Concert Programme, and has broadcast on national television in New Zealand, the UK and Yugoslavia. Gainsford moved to the United States in 1992 to enter the doctoral program at Indiana University, where he worked with Karen Shaw and Leonard Hokanson. Since that time he has been guest artist for the American Music Teachers Association and has also given numerous recitals, concerto performances and master-classes. He has appeared at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival and the Music Festival of the Hamptons, spent several summers at the Heifetz International Music Institute, is a member of the contemporary music group Ensemble X, and the Garth Newel Chamber Players. Gainsford has also enjoyed working with such musicians as Jacques Zoon, William Vermuelen, Roberto Diaz, Eddie vanOosthuyse and Luis Rossi. Formerly on the faculty of Ithaca College, where he received the college-wide Excellence in Teaching Award in 2004, Gainsford joined the piano faculty at Florida State University in 2005.