Friends coming together to bring inspiring classical music to Clinton and the larger Laurens County community will result in a remarkable, Romantic Sept. 26 concert at Presbyterian College.
Clinton residents Tom Scott and Jane Mahon will sponsor “Romantic Masterworks,” featuring Russian Apostolov on violin and Ina Petkova-Apostolov on cello, with their pianist, Andrew Harry, on the Edmunds Hall stage.
“Not only is Ina and Ruslan’s music worldly recognized as magical, their stage presence professionally pleasant, their communication to the audience educational, they (originally from Bulgaria) represent a charming couple with warm smiles and sincere technique with their strings,” Scott said. “Their strings will be accompanied by the distinguished pianist Andrew Harry.”
This concert is free to the public.
Scott’s relationship with Ruslan and Ina dates from the Joyce and Henry Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University in Georgia, where Scott is a board of advisers member emeritus. In fact, Ruslan and Ina were the featured performers at a party where Scott announced to his Columbus friends that he and Jane were getting married and they were moving to Clinton.
Jane drove Tom through the Presbyterian College campus on one of their first days in Clinton, and they have been arts benefactors at the local college ever since.
The performers will stay in Tom and Jane’s wonderfully appointed home, where they in the recent past have hosted other pre-concert garden parties. There will be no party this time, because of the logistics of transporting three performers to the concert and to sessions with the PC student-musicians.
PC Department of Music concert-organizers hope this, and other performances and student recitals scheduled throughout the year, will heighten awareness among music-lovers in Laurens County about the offerings at PC.
In recent years, more community-based musicians have joined the student-musicians in performances of chamber music and jazz.
PC has a music major and a music minor; but its wide-ranging performance and instruction offerings also can maintain the students’ love for music during their Blue Hose careers, even when they have other majors.
Scott said Dr. Giovani Briguente, director of bands, has done an excellent job in a short period of time recruiting publicity for the department and donations toward “getting the word out.”
In addition to Tom and Jane, Mary Lou Blalock has made valuable contributions to having professionally styled posters and event programs printed and distributed.
Briguente said he has recruited a small army of volunteers to fan out in Laurens County to distribute posters.
His success also shows in the students’ participation in ensembles: starting with 11 students in the wind ensemble and now having 34; 16 members of the jazz band; and 8 students in the highly selective chamber winds.
Scott said attention to detail shows in even what could seem to be the smallest thing, like having sharply-dressed students distribute the programs - and interact with attendees - at the performances.
Briguente said Scott has offered his expertise to the Presbyterian College Department of Music.
Dr. Karen Buckland is chair of the Music Department. The program also sponsored a concert on Sept. 4 and has a concert scheduled Sept. 18, both free to the public.
More performances are on the way.
On Oct. 3, PC will play host to the South Carolina Bach Society, Briguente said. Also, at a future concert, a flute piece written by Briguente will have its world debut at PC with a guest artist from the Marine Corps Band.
In the Sept. 26 concert, music will evoke the Romantic period of the 19th Century.
An article by the StrongOvation Team (2019, a Connelly Music Publication) explains, “Short description of what Romantic Era music is, At its core, composers of the Romantic Era saw music as a means of individual and emotional expression. Indeed, they considered music the art form most capable of expressing the full range of human emotion. As a result, romantic composers broadened the scope of emotional content.
“Music was expected to communicate to the audience, often by using a narrative form that told distinct stories.
“Romantic composers prioritized the emotional or narrative content of the music above its form, which is why they broke so many of the classical composers’ rules. Romantic composers didn’t reject or break with the musical language developed during the Classical Period. They used its forms as a foundation for their work but felt unconstrained by them.
“Beethoven is the originator of this approach. He lived and worked during the transition from the Classical to the Romantic Period, and was an inspiration to the Romantic composers who came after him.”
The Tuesday, Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m. in Edmunds Hall, Presbyterian College, South Broad Street in Clinton, performance will be works by Rachmanioff (Trio elegance no. 1 in G minor) and Mendelssohn (Piano Trio no. 2 in C minor, Op. 66).
More information about PC Music: https://www.presby.edu/academics/undergraduate/academic-departments-programs/music-department/
