River Campus concert will raise funds for instruments

As part of the initiative to replace aging musical instruments at Southeast Missouri State University's School of Visual and Performing Arts, critically acclaimed Russian piano virtuosa Valentina Igoshina will perform a special benefit concert Sunday at the River Campus.

The concert, hosted by Chamber Music Sundays at Three, is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. at Shuck Music Recital Hall.

The School of Visual and Performing Arts is embarking on a long-term initiative to replace $800,000 of the University's significant and substantial musical instruments. The instruments in use by the Southeast Missouri Symphony Orchestra, the Golden Eagles Marching Band and students in the Music Department have been refurbished well beyond their useful life, university officials say, and most in the poorest conditions are either large or extremely expensive. The price and size of the instruments makes them impractical to be individually owned by most Southeast students. For example, pianos, tubas and percussion instruments are some of the most pressing needs.

"Our immediate goal is to buy one new classroom piano with the funds that we raise from the concert," said Angie Wilson, Director of Development for the Southeast Missouri University Foundation. "It should be quite an afternoon, and Shuck Hall being located in the historic seminary building of the River Campus should make for an even more nice of a time."

Brandon Christensen, artistic director of Chamber Music Sundays at Three, is happy Igoshina will be at the River Campus and that the performance is for a good cause.

"The support we receive will benefit our students today and for many years to come," Christensen said.

About the artist

Featured pianist Igoshina began taking piano lessons while a child in the city of Bryansk, Russia in what was then the Soviet Union. At age 11, she traveled to Moscow and enrolled in the Moscow Central School of Music.

When she was 14, Igoshina traveled to Poland to participate in the Artur Robinson Piano Competition and took first prize. She continued to mature as a pianist and, at age 18, entered the renowned worldwide Rachmaninov Piano Competition in Moscow in 1997 and won first prize and a special award.

In 2002, Igoshina entered and won first prize in the Concoro Internazionale Pianistico competition, and was a finalist in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 2003. Igoshina took second prize in the Atlanta Competition in 2002 and the Jose Iturbi International Piano Competition in Spain in 2006.

She has appeared as a soloist on many of the grand concert stages of the world, and has performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra as guest conductor. Video clips of Igoshina playing the piano have received more than 8 million views on YouTube, and the clip of her playing Chopin's "Fantasie Impromptu" has received nearly 4 million views.

Igoshina recently performed in Tokyo with the Japan Philharmonic and in Gdansk with the Polish Baltic Symphony, and is currently on a Missouri recital tour.

Tickets for the concert are $25 and are available at rivercampusevents.com or by calling the River Campus box office at 651-2265.

For more information regarding Southeast's Instrument Initiative, contact the Southeast Missouri University Foundation at 651-2332.

klewis@semissourian.com

388-3635

Pertinent address: Shuck Music Recital Hall, 518 S. Fountain St., Cape Girardeau, Mo.