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Music School of Delaware launches centennial celebration with Sunday concert

Tom Byrne
/
Delaware Public Media

The Music School of Delaware kicks off a year of centennial celebrations with a concert in Newark this Sunday.

The performance, titled “From Bach to Banjo and Fiddle,” features two of the Music School’s faculty, violinist Eliezer Gutman and pianist Lotus Cheng. The duo will present a program that covers hundreds of years of music history across three continents.

Delaware School of Music voice faculty member Gus Mercante is organizing the year-long series.

“They really are giving us a great mix of composers and repertoire from Bach all the way up to Chen-Yi, a contemporary Chinese composer," he said. Music by Mozart, Brahms, and American composer William Kroll are also featured.

Sunday’s performance is at the Little Free Library in Newark. Mercante says, while the music school likes to show off its performance spaces, it’s also important to meet people where they are.

“What we were hoping to do was take the faculty and their fabulous talent and the music that we offer and take it out into different community venues," he said.

Dozens of additional concerts are planned throughout the year at venues around the state.

For the last 100 years, the school has offered private lessons, ensembles, and classes to musicians of all ages and abilities. The school’s Mary Jane Vanvestraut says learning to make music can have many benefits for adults and kids.

“Music is such an essential part of life," she said. It's not often viewed that way, which is really unfortunate. Studying music has proven to help a child be better in school subjects such as math, science and reading.”

Gutman and Cheng take the stage in Newark at 2:00 pm on Sunday. More information on the concert and the year-long series can be found at the Music School of Delaware's website.

Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

Martin Matheny comes to Delaware Public Media from WUGA in Athens, GA. Over his 12 years there, he served as a classical music host, program director, and the lead reporter on state and local government. In 2022, he took over as WUGA's local host of Morning Edition, where he discovered the joy of waking up very early in the morning.