Live in Studio C

Flutist Bart Feller is used to traveling the country with his instrument. While his main gigs are playing principal flute with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and teaching at Rutgers University, he spends summers in the desert playing with the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra and weekends teaching the pre college division at Julliard. 

Composer Nicholas Wing gave the world premiere of three works on this week's program, including a piece performed with a violin once played by Bronisław Huberman, founder of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (then known as the Palestine Philharmonic). 

When the idea of performing all of Ludwig van Beethoven's piano sonatas came to Matthew Phelps, Music Minister at West End United Methodist Church, he thought no one would take it seriously. Soon, however, Phelps had a roster of over 20 professional pianists—many of whom are professors at Belmont, Vanderbilt and Lipscomb— lined up to play the entire sonata cycle. 

The Maharaja Flamenco Trio stopped by prior to an evening concert at Middle Tennessee State University, bringing with them a lively set of classic Gypsy jazz and original flamenco music. Helmed by MTSU alumnus Silviu Ciulei, who is trained in both classical and flamenco guitar styles, the trio includes Tony Hartmann on percussion and David Cobb on bass. 

The Nashville Symphony Chorus is giving a free concert Sunday afternoon at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Ahead of that performance, conductor Tucker Biddlecomb and a portion of the 150-voice ensemble gave us a taste of the music they'll be singing, taken largely from British and American choral traditions.

Guitarists Robert Thompson and Joey Butler perform together as Duo Sudeste. The pair recently released an album of music from Latin America called Noviembre. In this performance, they play several selections from that collection, selections for February holidays, and a pair of tunes from other genres given the classical guitar touch.

The Blair String Quartet is one of Nashville's longest-lived chamber ensembles. Made up of faculty members from the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt, the current lineup consists of violinists Stephen Miahky and Cornelia Heard, John Kochanowski on viola and cellist Felix Wang. For this performance in Studio C, they brought a stalwart of the quartet repertoire and one of Haydn's least-performed quartets.

The all-female contemporary chamber group Sound Riot champions new music by living composers. Every year they dial their focus even tighter, presenting compositions of women in their annual "Galentines" concert. This year's performance is at 7pm on February 13 at Nashville State Community College. The ensemble brought us a preview of pieces on that program, including one world premiere.

Each year, students at Vanderbilt's Blair School of Music compete for a chance to perform in the annual student showcase. And once again, we hosted a group of the chosen performers in our studio for a preview of that concert, which takes place at 8pm on January 26 in Ingram Hall on the Vanderbilt campus.

This week's show features a trio of Midstate musicians making traditional Balkan and Bulgarian music, very similar to the folk melodies that influenced composers like Dvorak, Brahms and Bartok.