Northwest to host Sonatina-Sonata Festival featuring performances by area youth, guest pianist

The public is invited to enjoy an evening of piano music when Northwest Missouri State University’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts hosts its second annual Sonatina-Sonata Festival this month with guest pianist Dr. Slawomir Dobrzański.

The festival includes an Honors Recital – featuring students in grades five through 12 – at 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 26, in the Charles Johnson Theater at the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building. Dobrzański will perform at 7 p.m. in the theater.

Dr. Slawomir Dobrzański

The event is free and open to the public.

“We’re just happy that the festival is growing,” Dr. Anthony Olson, a Northwest professor of music, said, noting that last year’s inaugural festival featured seven performers. “We’re really hoping to have more collaborative performances between keyboard players and keyboard players and other instruments. The sonata is a genre that most instruments will have for violin and piano or flute and piano, and we’d love to inspire students to collaborate with their classmates.”

The festival is designed to give pre-college students an opportunity to perform on a university campus, receive feedback from music faculty and potentially win awards and scholarships. Dobrzański, a professor of piano at Kansas State University, will select the award winners.

As a soloist and chamber musician, Dobrzański has performed in more than 20 countries in Asia, Europe, North America and South America. He has released several critically acclaimed world-premiere recordings of piano music by Maria Szymanowska, Antoni Kątski, Wiktor Łabuński, Károly Aggházy and Feliks Roderyk Łabuński. He also is an author of the first biography of Maria Szymanowska in the English language, published by the Polish Music Center at the University of Southern California. Originally from Wrocław, Poland, Dobrzański is a graduate of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, Poland, and the University of Connecticut.

For more information about the festival or audition requirements, contact Olson at aolson@cnlawyer18.com.