Grove City College’s Showcase Series is bringing interesting and innovative musicians to campus this season, with concerts featuring IonSound Project, Kittel & Co., and Barbara Nissman.
The series, presented by the Department of Music, features guest artists on campus and at other venues to enrich the College community through exposure to and enjoyment of varied disciplines in the cultural and artistic world.
“The Showcase Series at Grove City College provides outstanding professional musicians and artists to perform for our students, alumni, friends, and the regional community. The performers are top rate musicians and will provide a wonderful variety of styles for our audiences,” said Dr. Jeffrey M. Tedford ’00, department chair and professor of Music.
Chamber music ensemble IonSound Project kicks off the Showcase Series at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3 in the Arnold Recital Hall of the Pew Fine Arts Center (PFAC) on campus. Praised by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for “exemplary taste” in programming and for playing that “generates sparks,” IonSound Project – clarinetist Kathleen Costello, cellist Elisa Kohanski, and pianist Jack Kurutz – augments Pittsburgh’s cultural life with innovative concerts, commissioning works of new music, pursuing collaborations, and exploring the boundaries between concert and popular music. Tickets: alumni.gcc.edu/ionsound.
Kittel & Co. perform at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 7 in PFAC’s Ketler Auditorium. Led by acclaimed violinist Jeremy Kittel, formerly of the Grammy-winning Turtle Island Quartet, the band inhabits the space between classical and acoustic roots, Celtic and bluegrass aesthetics, and folk and jazz sensibilities. The members of Kittel & Co. – mandolin phenom Josh Pinkham, transcendent guitarist Quinn Bachand, bassist Jacob Warren, and hammer-dulcimer wizard Simon Chrisman – coalesce into a singular voice that’s thrilled audiences from the Telluride Bluegrass Festival to A Prairie Home Companion. Tickets: alumni.gcc.edu/kittelandco.
Famed Steinway artist Barbara Nissman brings her talents to Ketler Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 29. Nissman's career was launched by conductor Eugene Ormandy after he heard her perform as a student. Her recordings of Prokofiev, Bartók and Ginastera are considered “definitive,” and she has garnered praise for her series of recordings of nineteenth-century composers, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Brahms, and Rachmaninoff. Hailed as “one of the last pianists in the grand Romantic tradition of Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Rubinstein,” she continues the grand bravura tradition of romantic pianism. Tickets: alumni.gcc.edu/steinwayartist
Tickets for all shows are $20 for the public, with discounts for College employees and free admission for Grove City College students.