CEDARVALE NEIGHBOR SYLVIA PARKER TO GIVE SPECIAL MUSICAL PRESENTATION
Multi Media Presentation on Composer Béla Bartók
Designed with the Family in Mind
Island Arts
is pleased to showcase pianist, Sylvia Parker, in a program featuring the music
of Béla Bartók at the South Hero Congregational Church, on South Street, at 2:00 p.m.
on Sunday April 28th. Bartók is
considered one of the twentieth century's most famous composers and has ties to
Vermont. Admission is by donation and supports the
Island Arts Youth Scholarship Fund.
Parents are
encouraged to bring their children as Parker's presentation includes pictures,
stories, recordings and live performance of some of Bartók's most engaging
works for children, including Romanian Folk Dances, Sonatina, Petite Suite and
more that he collected on Edison phonograph cylinders during his visits with
the peasants of Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Parker offers the historic sound
of these rural folks singing and playing their bagpipes, flutes and fiddles in
his field recordings and then performs his piano arrangements of the same
tunes. She even offers a recording of Bartók
himself at the piano. He spent one
summer in Vermont
and Parker shares photos of him along with remembrances from the local folks
who knew him. By coincidence, she and
her husband Gary live just up the road from the cottage where Bartók stayed
during the summer of 1941.
Parker is a
music faculty member at the University
of Vermont, where she
teaches piano and music therapy. She
performs in Vermont,
nationally and internationally. She has
published articles about Bartók in Studia Musicologica, College Music Symposium
and Vermont History. Her CD of piano
music by Bartók, Griffes, Mozart, and D. Scarlatti is published by Centaur
Records.
