Dennis Parker, cello & Gregory Sioles, piano

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The Department of Strings presents a guest recital featuring cellist Dennis Parker and pianist Gregory Sioles. Free and open to the public.

ABOUT THE GUEST ARTISTS

Cellist DENNIS PARKER was born in New York City and began his cello studies at the age of six. He received his early training with Channing Robbins of the Juilliard School, and later earned degrees from Indiana University and Yale University, where he worked with Janos Starker and Aldo Parisot, respectively.

Since 1988, Parker has served as Professor of Cello and String Chamber Music at the Louisiana State University School of Music. A former member of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Parker has also served as Principal Cellist of the Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In 2003 he recorded to DVD the first complete performance of David Popper’s “High School of Cello Playing” and authored of the accompanying manual, “Popper Manifesto.”

Inspired by a variety of musical activity, Parker appears frequently as soloist, recitalist, collaborator, and guest professor at universities and festivals worldwide. He is actively involved in the expansion of the existing cello repertoire, and has transcribed many important works for his instrument: Mozart on Cello? presents Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, K364, and Mozart’s A Major Violin Concerto, K219, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Brahms’s Viola Sonata in E Flat Major to name but a few.

Parker has also released CDs with the Centaur label: Cello Matters features crossover music for cello and piano by Liduino Pitombeira, Daniel Schnyder, David Baker, and Astor Piazzolla; Uplifting Discoveries from a Generation Lost is a recording of chamber music by composers who perished in the Holocaust (Erwin Schulhoff, Gideon Klein, Viktor Ullmann and Hans Krasa). Other recent recordings include Volume 1 of Stolen Sonatas, with pianist Jennifer Hayghe, with his own transcriptions of Debussy’s Sonata for Violin, Poulenc’s Sonata for Flute, and Enesco’s Sonata No.3 for Violin, The Lone Cello, featuring solo cello works by Scott Howard Eggert (Uccello), George Crumb, Viktor Kalabis, and György Ligeti, and the complete cello works of Walter Burle Marx, his Concerto (1983), Sambatango for cello and piano, Divertimento a Tre for flute, oboe and cello, and the Casanova Fantasy Variations for Three Celli.

When not playing cello, Parker, an avid woodworker and sculptor, creates objects that extend his musical expression and complement the delicate act of performance with the risky business of maneuvering wood through various cutting and shaping devices. He lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with his wife, artist Jacqueline Dee Parker, and their oversized Shepherd/Lab, Leda.

GREGORY SIOLES is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Previously he was an Associate Professor of Piano at Louisiana State University where he taught for nearly 15 years.

Sioles has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards including a Fulbright Scholarship for study in London, and an Atwater Kent Grand Prize. He has performed on three continents at such venues as the Purcell Room (London), Amerika Haus (Berlin), and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Following his London debut in 1983 he made solo appearances in Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and Scotland. He has also performed extensively throughout the United States as a recitalist and soloist with orchestra, and been a featured artist on National Public Radio. An avid chamber musician, he has collaborated with numerous artists, including Edgar Meyer, Barry Tuckwell, the Guarneri String Quartet, and members of the Baltimore and National Symphonies. Part of the Washington D.C. music scene for over a decade, he performed solo and chamber recitals in many of the city’s most important halls, among them the Kennedy Center and National Gallery, the Phillips Collection, Strathmore Hall, the French Embassy, and the Corcoran Gallery. Recent international engagements have taken him to Taiwan with bassist Yung-Chiao Wei, where he performed and presented master classes in five major Taiwanese cities including Kaohsiung and Taipei. Sioles has also visited Panama and Costa Rica where he taught and gave both chamber and solo performances. His recordings for Centaur Records include a solo disc and a CD of French Sonatas with violinist Lin He. Another, more recent recording, features the two Brahms clarinet sonatas performed by Griffin Campbell on the alto saxophone.

Sioles’ principal teachers were Gyorgy Sebok, Maria Curcio, Victor Aller, and Aube Tzerko. Previous to LSU, Sioles served on faculties of the University of Maryland, Peabody Conservatory, and Levine Music in Washington, D.C.