Sang Woo Kang is proud to host Providence College’s annual Keyboard Festival, featuring world-renowned pianists Solungga Fang-Tzu Liu and Sean Duggan in a series of master classes and concerts. The event will consist of a piano master class session with Dr. Liu starting on 10 AM on Saturday, March 31, and two solo concerts. The first solo concert, featuring Dr. Liu, will be held 7 PM on Friday, March 30. Father Duggan will perform the following day, Saturday, March 31st at 7 PM.
All events will be held in the Ryan Concert Hall, in the Smith Center for the Arts at Providence College.
This concert is free and open to the public. For more information, please call or email Cheryl Barry at (401) 865 – 2183 or cbarry@providence.edu, or check the Providence College’s music department website for directions.
Solungga Fang-Tzu Liu
With a wide-ranging repertoire, pianist Solungga Fang-Tzu Liu has enjoyed an active career as a soloist and collaborator in venues across three continents. A dedicated performer of new music, Ms. Liu has performed music by many composers of our time, including the Lutoslawski Piano Concerto with Ossia, Steve Reich’s The Desert Music and Tehillim with Alarm Will Sound, and Meandering River for solo piano by Robert Morris (which is dedicated to her). With AWS, Ms. Liu has recorded two CDs of Reich’s major works, and a recording of Meandering River has been released by Albany Records. In addition, Ms. Liu premiered Gregory Mertl’s Piano Concerto with the University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble, conducted by Craig Kirchhoff in November 2011. Commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, this concerto was written for Ms. Liu and the University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble and she will be recording it for INNOVA Records in 2012.
Ms. Liu has concertized extensively during the past several years. Major performances include Ravel’s Concerto in G Major with Taipei Metropolitan Orchestra, a collaborative recital with Paul Merkelo, Principal Trumpet of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, solo recitals at Taiwan’s National Concert Hall, the Goethe Center in Bangkok, the Central Conservatory in Beijing, the Thailand International Mozart Festival, and a chamber concert with new music ensemble Open Gate at Carnegie Hall. Her 2011-12 performances include concerts with BGSU trumpet professor Charles Saenz at the Fifth International Trumpet Festival in Shenyang, China, recital tours in eight states in the US, and concerts and master classes in Romania, where she will be one of the featured guest artists at the 2012 Romanian-American Music Festival in Bistrita.
Ms. Liu is Assistant Professor of Piano at the College of Musical Arts, Bowling Green State University. In addition to her dedication to her students at BGSU, Ms. Liu maintains a vigorous schedule as a guest teacher and as an adjudicator at major conservatories and competitions, among them the Central Conservatory in Beijing, the Central Conservatory Piano School in Gulangyu, Xiamen, National Taiwan Normal University, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore, the University of Minnesota, the First Thailand International Mozart Competition and the Eastman Young Artists International Piano Competition.
Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Ms. Liu holds a doctoral degree in piano performance from the Eastman School of Music where she studied with Alan Feinberg, Douglas Humpherys and Elizabeth DiFelice.
Dr. Kang has reviewed her 2010 release, The Pleasure-Dome of Kubla Khan: Piano Works of Charles Tomlinson Griffes (Centaur) for the Clavier Companion magazine. This review is forthcoming in the March/April 2012 issue.
Sean Duggan
SEÁN DUGGAN, OSB, pianist, is a monk of St. Joseph Abbey in Covington, Louisiana. He obtained his music degrees from Loyola University in New Orleans and Carnegie Mellon University, and received a Master’s degree in theology from Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. From 1988 to 2001 he taught music, Latin and religion at St. Joseph Seminary College in Louisiana and was director of music and organist at St. Joseph Abbey.
In September, 1983 he won first prize in the Johann Sebastian Bach International Competition for Pianists in Washington, D.C., and again in August, 1991. Having a special affinity for the music of Bach, in 2000 he performed the complete cycle of Bach’s keyboard works eight times in various American and European cities. For seven years he hosted a weekly program on the New Orleans NPR station entitled “Bach on Sunday.” He is presently in the midst of recording the complete cycle of Bach’s keyboard (piano) music which will comprise 24 CDs.
Before he joined the Benedictine order he was pianist and assistant chorus master for the Pittsburgh Opera Company for three years. He has performed with many orchestras including the Louisiana Philharmonic, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Leipzig Baroque Soloists, The Prague Chamber Orchestra, The American Chamber Orchestra and the Pennsylvania Sinfonia. From 2001 to 2004 he was a visiting professor of piano at the University of Michigan. Currently he is associate professor of piano at SUNY Fredonia. During the fall semester of 2008 he was also a guest professor of piano at Eastman School of Music. He has been a guest artist and adjudicator at the Chautauqua Institution for several summers, and is also a faculty member of the Golandsky Institute at Princeton, New Jersey. He continues to study the Taubman approach with Edna Golandsky in New York City.