Two Juilliard School graduates, award-winning musicians and professors of music will share the stage during the next Music Faculty Artist Series concert, sponsored by Whitesel Music, at Eastern Mennonite University.
David Berry, a professor of piano at EMU, joins cellist Patrice Jackson-Tilghman, professor at the Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory at Berklee. This is Berry’s second concert as a featured faculty artist; his first concert was performed to a packed house in March 2018.
The concert on Saturday, March 23, at 7 p.m. will be in Martin Chapel in the Seminary building on the Eastern Mennonite University campus. Admission is free, with donations welcomed for EMU’s music scholarship fund.
Among her many accomplishments, Jackson-Tilghman was a member of the Mark O’Connor String Quartet. In a recent interview, Berry said that he suspects many local music-lovers will be familiar with that talented group and its eclectic repertoire.
Musical works will include pieces by Chopin, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Martinů, Berry and Jackson-Tilghman.
Violinist David McCormick, executive director of the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, will make a guest appearance for Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No.2 in C Minor, Op.66.
“The concert will feature solo and chamber music masterworks by composers Chopin, Debussy and Mendelssohn, but the second half will also feature some fun selections that combine jazz/gospel/classical music in original arrangements by the performers,” Berry said.
More about Patrice Jackson-Tilghman
A native of St. Louis, Jackson-Tilghman has performed with the Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Omaha, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Grand Rapids, Nashville, Hartford, Chautauqua, Colorado and Mississippi symphonies, as well as with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She also made her international orchestral and recital debuts in South Africa in 2002.
Some highlights of her 2018-19 season included performances with Berklee’s World Strings, Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s Chamber Orchestra and Boston Conservatory’s Faculty Recital Series.
In addition to her classical credentials, Jackson-Tilghman has played behind iconic artists Alicia Keys, Kanye West, J-Cole and Stevie Wonder.
A graduate of the Juilliard School in New York and the Yale School of Music in New Haven, Jackson-Tilghman has been a student of Janos Starker, Aldo Parisot, Joel Krosnick, and Bonnie Hampton. She has taken master classes with world-renowned Brazilian cellist Aldo Parisot, and has studied chamber music with Claude Frank and the Tokyo String Quartet at the Yale School of Music, as well as with the Juilliard String Quartet at the Juilliard School.
In 2002, Jackson-Tilghman was awarded first place in the Senior Laureate Division of the nationally renowned Sphinx Competition, and was the recipient of the 2002 Yale University Aldo Parisot Prize awarded to a “gifted cellist who shows promise for a concert career.” She began piano lessons with her mother at the age of three and cello lessons with her father at the age of eight. At 13, she made her debut with the Belleville Philharmonic Orchestra, performing the Elgar Cello Concerto.
More about David Berry
A native of Syracuse, New York, Berry is a classical pianist whose performances have been featured in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, the UW World Series at the University of Washington, as well as live broadcasts of WQXR (New York City). Recent concerto engagements have included appearances with the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival Orchestra and the Hudson Symphony Orchestra.
He has worked with or premiered works by a number of noted composers, including James Lee III, Jeffery Scott (Imani Winds) and grammy-award winning composer Jennifer Higdon. Berry was a featured soloist in the Juilliard School’s Focus Festival, All About Elliott, celebrating the 100th birthday of Elliott Carter, and also featured in piano series hosted by author David Dubal at the Kosciusko Foundation and the Cervantes Institute.
Berry was the Grand Prize Winner of the Bradshaw and Buono International Piano Competition, as well as a prizewinner in the Thousand Islands International Piano Competition.
An avid chamber musician, he has collaborated with members of many of the nation’s leading orchestras, including the New Jersey, Houston, St. Louis, Dallas, and Seattle symphonies. He has toured and regularly concertized as a resident member of the Jacksonville, Florida based Ritz Chamber Players, The Harlem Chamber Players, and the innovative chamber music theater group, the Core Ensemble. As an arts administrator, David serves as Chair of Chamber Music Programs for the Gateways Music Festival at the Eastman School of Music, a biennial festival which celebrates the contributions of musicians of African descent to classical music, and features over 120 players from major American orchestras and university faculties across the United States. He is also currently the president of the Harrisonburg Music Teachers Association.
Berry received his Bachelor of Music with High Distinction from the Eastman School of Music, and Masters and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in piano performance from the Juilliard School where he was a recipient of the C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellowship and Susan W. Rose Piano Scholarship. His piano teachers have included Martin Canin, Douglas Humpherys, and George Skafidas, with collaborative piano coachings under Russell Miller and chamber music studies under Seymour Lipkin, Jacob Lateiner and Jonathan Feldman.