Auburn Montgomery to host Grammy-nominated composer March 26

George Tsontakis, American composer, will attend the world premiere of his work “Mirror Image” March 26 at 7:30 p.m. in Goodwyn Hall Auditorium at AUM. Before the event, Tsontakis will be installed as the university’s newest Weil Fellow.

“He is a very highly recognizable composer. This work was commissioned by the Weil committee,” said Nancy Grisham Anderson, associate professor of English.

Tsontakis has been the recipient of the two richest prizes awarded in all of classical music - the international Grawemeyer Award in 2005 for his "Second Violin Concerto and the 2007 Ives Living, awarded every three years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Tsontakis has also studied with Roger Sessions at Juilliard and in Rome with Franco Donatoni.

Most of Tsontakis’ music, including 11 major orchestral works and four concertos, has been recorded by Hyperion and Koch, leading to two Grammy nominations for Best Classical Composition.

Thursday’s concert will feature classical musicians and Weil Fellows David Finckel on cello and pianist Wu Han.

Finckel and Han are among today’s top classical musicians, receiving consistently superlative accolades in distinguished venues throughout the world. They serve as artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Music@Menlo, a new chamber music festival in California’s Silicon Valley. Finckel also serves as the cellist of the Grammy Award-winning Emerson String Quartet.

Tsontakis’ work “Mirror Image” and Finckel and Han's performances are sponsored by the Weil Family Endowment for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities.

For more information, contact Dr. Mark Benson at 334-244-3385, or mbenson@aum.edu.

March 5, 2009