Soprano Roza Tulyaganova and mezzo-soprano Jeanette Fontaine will perform a donor-supported concert with pianist Christy Lee at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University on Thursday from noon to 1:00 p.m. in the Auditorium as part of the museum’s weekly series, “A Little Lunch Music. The trio will present “Dueling Divas,” a program of duos by composers including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Giacomo Puccini, Georges Bizet, and Irving Berlin. All three performers are on faculty at Mississippi State Univeristy. An anonymous gift has helped to make this performance possible.The café menu is available online.

Tulyagonova is a native of Uzbekistan. She has performed to acclaim such opera roles as Fiordiligi in “Cosí fan tutte” at Hubbard Hall Opera, Countess in Capital Opera’s “Marriage of Figaro,” and Lauretta in “Gianni Schicchi” with the Mississippi Opera. She completed graduate degrees at the Manhattan School of Music and Stony Brook University.

Fontaine studied at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the University of Alabama. Her students have placed in both the National Association of Teachers of Singing and Mississippi Music Teachers Association competitions. She is the musical director and conductor for the Mississippi State University Opera and currently teaches Song Literature and Diction in English, German, Italian, and French. Dr. Fontaine is studying the Russian language and is an avid performer of Russian repertoire.

Lee has worked as pianist, coach, and assistant conductor at Opera Memphis, Chattanooga Opera, Pensacola Opera, Cleveland Opera, Knoxville Opera, Crested Butte Music Festival, Lake Placid International Voice Seminar, Pine Mountain Music Festival, Lyric Opera Cleveland, and Dorian Opera Theatre. For six years Lee was on the faculty of the College of The Bahamas where she was a founding member of C Force, the school’s premiere chamber group. She holds degrees from Florida State University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the University of Alabama.

The KKR Trio will perform a donor-supported concert at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University, from noon to 1:00 p.m. in the Grand Gallery as part of the museum’s weekly series, “A Little Lunch Music.” The group features violinist Helen Kim, cellist Charae Krueger, and pianist William Ransom performing Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Piano Trio, op. 97,” famously known as the “Archduke Trio.”

A gift from Janne Debes and Ken Autrey and gifts from Friends of the Series have helped to make this performance possible.

 The café menu is available online.

With two degrees from The Juilliard School, Kim is the recipient of more than one hundred national and international awards. She served as assistant and associate concertmaster for the Atlanta Symphony and is currently the assistant concertmaster of the Atlanta Opera Orchestra. She is Professor of Violin at Kennesaw State University and performs with new-music ensembles Bent Frequency, Sonic Generator, Thamyris, and recently joined the Atlanta Chamber Players.

Krueger is principal cellist for both the Atlanta Opera Orchestra and the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra and Cello Artist-in-Residence at Kennesaw State University. She has been featured on NPR’s Performance Today, WABE Radio Atlanta, and WGBH Radio Boston. She has recorded on albums of Bruce Springsteen, Faith Hill, and Natalie Cole. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from New England Conservatory and holds an Artist Diploma from the Longy School of Music.

One of Musical America Worldwide’s “30 Musical Innovators,” Ransom collaborates with musicians including Yo-Yo Ma, Richard Stoltzman, and William Preucil, among others. A graduate of The Juilliard School, he is now Director of Piano Studies and the Mary Emerson Professor of Piano at Emory University. He is Artistic Director of the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta, the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival, and the Juneau Jazz & Classics Festival.

On Thursday, May 10, from noon to 1:00 p.m., the series will present a free concert by the David Banks Gospel Jazz Experience. The group performs Banks’ arrangements of traditional Gospel songs as well as contemporary Gospel-jazz compositions. A gift from Friends of the Series has helped to make this performance possible.

Click here for more about the performers and a full schedule for spring 2018.

Banks is a classically trained musician with over 45 years of experience in musical styles including jazz, Gospel, R&B, country, and top-40. Inspired by a lifetime of faith and the expressive freedom of jazz, he now brings musicians together for his Gospel jazz projects.

The group performs arrangements, mostly by Banks, of traditional hymns and spirituals. A performer, composer, and promoter, he considers music to be one of the most important things in his life. But he says recent hip problems prevented him from being able to sit at the piano long enough to play even one song. Now, after successful hip surgery, he’s chosen music to fit a theme of “Walk with Me.”

Thursday’s program will include songs such as the traditional “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” and C. Austin Miles’ 1912 hymn “In the Garden” whose lyrics include the line, “And He walks with me / And he talks with me.” Along with a theme, he usually has a musical focus as well. “I’m going to concentrate on vocal improv this time.”

Vocalist Florence Miller will perform Thursday. Banks says at a young age, Miller moved from Tuskegee to New York with her family. She eventually became a professional musician, singing R&B, jazz, top-40, and dance music in New York. “She knows how to communicate with an audience,” Banks said.

Returning with the band to the series will be singers Louville Holstick and David Banks’ wife Barbara Banks along with Sam Williams on saxophone and flute. Columbus guitarist Elwood Madeo will join the band along with violinist Dan campbell and trombonist Martin Sager.

David Banks says singers from different regions have styles that distinguish them from each other. He says when she was growing up in Florida, Barbara Banks used to have a singing group with her sisters. “Her voice has a certain unique character to it,” David Banks said.

“Gospel music is a folk music,” he said. “Each area has its own flavor to it.” He says the music’s provincial nature comes from the way each region’s slaves used spirituals in 18th- and 19th-century America. During those times, not only styles were different, but also lyrics and music used to give specific instructions to escapees.

On Thursday, May 3, from noon to 1:00 p.m., the series will present a free concert in the Grand Gallery by R2Duo featuring flutist Rachel Nozny and guitarist Robert Gibson. The program will feature music by composers including Manuel de Falla, Mathias Duplessy, Robert Beaser, and Astor Piazzola. Gifts from Larry & Marnie Leonard and from Friends of the Series have helped to make this performance possible.

Click here to read more about the performers and to see the full schedule for spring 2018.

Nozny and Gibson formed R2Duo in the spring of 2014. Both performers are faculty members in the John M. Long School of Music at Troy University.

Much of Thursday’s program is music based on folk songs from Spain, Brazil, Argentina, and the U.S. Though not singing words, Nozny says she finds it helpful to know the lyrics if what she’s playing is based on a song.

“I do research to find the meaning behind the text,” Nozny said. For instance, “Nana” from de Falla’s “Suite Popular Espaῆola” is a lullaby. But studying the text, Nozny learned that it is sung to a child by a dying grandmother who knows she will not see the child grow up.

Another traditional folk song the duo will perform is “Barbara Allen,” included in Beaser’s work, “Mountain Songs.” In it, the words describe unrequited love, but the death of one of its characters makes the song much sadder.

Nozny says the tunes are easy enough to play sweetly, but knowing the lyrics changes her approach as she tries to express the feelings in the stories.

For his piece “Appalaches,” Duplessy used inspiration other than folk songs. Born in 1972, he is a French composer whose pieces are inspired by music from around the world. The title is a French word for the Appalachian mountain range. It uses some of the flute and guitar’s extended techniques, or unusual ways to make sounds. But Nozny says it is very tonal and has been recorded quite a bit. “It’s fun to play together because both parts are fast and high energy and virtuosic,” she said.

Nozny performs with the Mobile Symphony Orchestra and others. She teaches Aural Skills at Troy University and flute at the Montgomery School of Music. She holds degrees from Mercer University and the University of Kentucky.

Gibson teaches guitar at Troy. He has been featured with the San Antonio Symphony, and has toured as performer in the United States, Mexico and Italy. He studied at the University of Texas at San Antonio, at the University of Texas at Austin, and for four years with guitarist and teacher Oscar Ghiglia at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy.

On Thursday, April 19, from noon to 1:00 p.m., the series will present a free concert in the Grand Gallery by Duo Echo featuring oboist Jennifer Pifer and pianist Joshua Pifer. The program will feature music by Emile Paladihle, Francis Poulenc, William Grant Still, Otto Mortensen, and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. A gift from Patricia Giordano and a gift from Bob Ekelund & Mark Thornton have helped to make this performance possible.

Click here for more about the performers and a full schedule for spring 2018.

After the couple’s first recital together about twenty years ago, they continued with Duo Echo by seeking out performance venues in rural areas. “We brought our music to communities that did not typically have access to live classical performance,” said Jennifer Pifer.

Not only did the strategy pay off for their audiences, Jennifer Pifer says it gave the Pifers the opportunity to hone their craft. Through the many performances they did, often with Joshua Pifer playing old, upright pianos in churches and community centers in very rural areas, they learned to interact with each other and their audiences in meaningful ways.

After years of family and employer priorities having taken precedence over Duo Echo, they are performing together again. “It has been a great joy to us in the past couple years to return to our group’s roots and to perform once again in intimate community settings such as the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art,” said Jennifer Pifer.

One of the pieces they have played and loved since the beginning of Duo Echo is Poulenc’s “Sonata for oboe and piano.” “The Poulenc sonata is one of the absolute saddest pieces in oboe repertoire,” Jennifer PIfer said. “It’s just heartrendingly sad.” She says people seem to love it because it draws forth such strong emotion.

In contrast to Poulenc’s piece, Jennifer Pifer uses words like “charming and delightful,” and “sweet and carefree,” to describe the Mortensen sonata. But playing the music is not a carefree process. She says the piece requires a lot of precision to get the composer’s ideas across to the audience.

Jennifer Pifer says Mortensen wrote using melodies that overlap, sometimes in complex ways. And though the melodies are related, it isn’t often in a way that is easy to hear. “It’s not really contrapuntal, but it works out,” she said, meaning that it doesn’t quite sound like a conventional melody-against-countermelody situation.

Paladilhe wrote “Solo pour Hautbois” as a graduation piece for the Paris Conservatory. If oboe students passed their performance of the piece, they could graduate, no matter how young they were.

“I love this piece because it is very clear that it was written to highlight the technical prowess but also the individuality of the musician,” Jennifer Pifer said. She explains by saying there are parts written to give the oboist a lot of freedom to shape the melody, letting her improvise with changes in tempo and volume to make it her own.

In contrast, she says Still’s piece, “Incantation and Dance,” was written to sound like it is improvised, but in fact has very specific instructions so it will sound exactly as the composer intended.

Jennifer Pifer is a freelance oboist living in Auburn who performs with area chamber and church orchestras. Past guest appearances have included the Oxford Chamber Orchestra, the New Century Players, the Bardsdale Vespers Orchestra, and the Temple City Guest Orchestra. She teaches oboe and reedmaking in her private studio.

A Senior Lecturer at Auburn University, Joshua Pifer teaches Piano Skills, Functional Piano, Music Skills, and Applied Piano. In summer, he teaches at Blue Lake Fine Arts Festival and previously taught at Florida State University and the Orfeo Music Festival in Vipiteno, Italy. His first solo CD, “Alexander Tcherepnin My Favorite Piano Works,” was released in 2015.

On Thursday, April 19, from noon to 1:00 in the Grand Gallery, the series will present a free concert by members of the Auburn University piano studio led by Dr. Jeremy Samolesky. Jordan Barnett, Jinjin Chen, Yongyu Chen, Emma Beth Fisher, Brittany Lee, Sarah Niedzwiecki, and Caroline Smith will perform music by Joseph Haydn, Claude Debussy, and Johannes Brahms.

Click here for more about the performers and the full schedule for spring 2018.

The performance is supported in part by a gift from Helga Geyling in memory of Tom and Ruth Wright and by an anonymous gift. In 2009, Tom and Ruth Wright donated to the museum the 1972 Steinway piano that is used for many of the series’ concerts.

Earlier this month, Samolesky’s students presented a concert at Goodwin Hall entirely of Debussy’s works from his first book of préludes. Thursday’s concert will include some of these préludes. This year is the 100th since the composer’s death.

Barnett will play the eighth prélude. He says it has a lot of four- and five-note chords which help him with voicing. Voicing means playing the melody lines so that they can be heard above notes and chords that serve other functions.

“I think of it almost like a jazz piece,” Barnett said, adding that jazz often presents its melodies in a similar way. “I’ve been playing mostly jazz and Gospel since I was little.” A freshman, he is also studying mechanical engineering.

Smith will play the first prélude. She says this piece also presents voicing challenges that include parts where the melody is in the middle of the chord, rather than at the top. “I think it’s pretty,” she said, adding that it is slower and has a calming feeling.

Smith, a sophomore, has been playing piano for nine years. She also plays tuba in the Marching Band, having won auditions on tuba for honor bands and All State Bands in high school.

Youngyu Chen will play Debussy’s eleventh prelude. “This prélude is a playful, elfin dance,” said Chen. A freshman from Changsha in the Hunan province of southern China, she considers music to be integral to her life, having played piano since age five.

Sophomore Jinjin Chen from China’s Fujian Province switched her major to music this year, having only been playing piano since she was a teenager. She will play the twelfth prélude. “It’s very cute and interesting and can make other people very happy,” she said.

Fisher will play Debussy’s fourth and fifth préludes. She says number four is challenging, because of the many character changes, and number five is very quick. Throughout middle and high school, Fisher won awards in state competitions. Now a junior at Auburn, she has taken part in a two-week music festival in Vipiteno, Italy, and will perform a full recital Thursday night at 6:00 p.m. at Goodwin Hall.

Niedzwiecki and Ye will also play Debussy préludes. Niedzwiecki is a singer and horn player studying to be a band director. Ye is a composer and an accomplished harpist. Both pianists are sophomores at Auburn.

Bookending the Debussy works will be a sonata by Haydn, played by Lee, and a rhapsody by Brahms, played by Fisher. Lee is a freshman from Anniston. In high school she was named Outstanding Accompanist of Alabama for three years in a row and was awarded the Glenda M. Potts Music Scholarship.

Lee says she likes the Haydn sonata because it’s clean and articulate. “It’s more of a playful sound,” Lee said. It is a one-movement piece composed in the three-section sonata-allegro form commonly used by composers of western music’s Classical Period, when Haydn lived.

Fisher says Brahms, a Romantic composer, used a modified version of sonata-allegro form when he wrote “Rhapsody in G Minor.” She says the first of its three parts is dramatic and passionate. Afterwards is a quiet, intimate chordal section marked “sotto voce.” “It’s almost like an under-your-breath type of sound,” she said. Gradually, it builds to the final section of song-like melody.

On Thursday, April 12, from noon to 1:00, the series will present a free concert in the Grand Gallery by soprano Janet Hopkins with pianist Armen Shaomian. The program will feature composer Olga Harris’s settings of texts by Erich Fried and Shel Silverstein and cabaret songs by William Bolcom and Arnold Weinstein. This program has been made possible in part by a visiting faculty travel grant from the Southeastern Conference and by a gift from Friends of the Series.

Click this link for more about the performers and a full schedule for fall 2018.

At the Met, Hopkins performed in operas such as “Die Walküre,” “Der Rosenkavalier,” and “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” and toured Japan three times. Her biography lists appearances at Carnegie Hall and during the opening ceremonies of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.

Shaomian has performed at venues such as the Royal Concert Hall and the Globe Arena in Stockholm, Sweden; the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland; and Orchestra Hall in Detroit, Michigan. He is Assistant Professor in Sport and Entertainment Management at the University of South Carolina, and is the founder and CEO of Armenize, Inc., an arts-consulting agency.

Harris, a Russian-American composer, set Fried’s poems to music in “Hoff Nunc,” which the duo will perform Thursday. “The title means ‘hope,’ but actually the song has a lot of ideas about hopelessness,” Hopkins said. Fried was a Jewish-born Austrian poet who fled to England around the beginning of World War II.

Shaomian says in 2017 Harris heard the duo’s performance of “Hoff Nunc,” and liked it so much she offered to write a piece for them. The result was “Swings,” a song cycle using poems by Silverstein.

Silverstein, author of books such as “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “The Giving Tree,” is known for writing simple poems, often using complex themes and humor. With song titles like “Hot Dog” and “The Fly is In,” it has a very different character than “Hoff Nunc.” Hopkins says Harris’ Silverstein settings look like they shouldn’t be sung by an opera singer. “I like to be a little bit silly,” she said.

Shaomian says he is not a serious person at all. “It reflects our personalities, both of the vocal and the piano,” Shaomian said of “Swings.” “Janet and I just have a lot of fun together.”

The duo will finish the program with a set of cabaret songs by Bolcom, a Pulitzer Award-winning composer. “While it’s kind of serious music, it’s also not,” Shaomian said. Hopkins says it’s serious in the sense that it takes a certain skill that’s different from what Hopkins sings in opera music.

“Some of these are quite tricky to sing,” Hopkins said.

Hopkins’ recordings include “The Ghosts of Versailles and Elektra” DVDs along with thirteen performances over the Texaco Broadcast “Live from the Met” series. In 2013, she performed the role of Sue in Robert Bradshaw’s recording of his opera “Plastic.” Her solo recordings include “Ulysses Kay: Works for Chamber Orchestra and Soprano,” “When I have Sung my Songs,” and “ARIA.”

Shaomian’s piano recordings of the music of Hugo Alfvén are featured on Vax Records’ “Vaxholm – Ett Dubbelnöje.”

Hopkins’ website is janetehopkins.com. Shaomian’s website is armenize.com.

A Little Lunch Music is coordinated by Patrick McCurry. It is an informal, weekly series that features national and international performers as well as the region’s professionals and students. The schedule can be found on the museum’s calendar at jcsm.auburn.edu.

For more information, contact Scott Bishop, university Liaison and curator of Education, at bishogs@auburn.edu or 334-844-7014.