Classical musicians have date in Mount Vernon

Andrew Daniel
Andrew Daniel

MOUNT VERNON, Texas-Andrew Daniel, classical guitarist, performs at 3 p.m. Sunday April 14 at Mount Vernon Music Hall, together with the Orchard Ensemble performing string quartets by Vaughan Williams and Tchaikovsky. The two Romantic era string quartets will play two very different uplifting musical messages from post WWII England and czarist Russia.

Performing will be cellist Zachary Mansell with Ute Miller, viola; Mark Miller, violin; Yuko Mansell, violin.

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Staff Photo J.T. Wampler Shane Ivy of Pea Ridge looks for running room Friday against Prairie Grove.

The program will open with the performances of two scholarship winners.

Tickets are $10 for Mount Vernon Music members, $20 for non-members, and $5 for college students with valid ID. Children's admission through high school is free. (8th grade and younger must be accompanied by an adult ticketholder.)

Andrew Daniel, Professor of Music at Northeast Texas Community College, has been hailed by the press as a "gifted musician of the highest order." Before his return to Texas in 2001, he toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe.

After completing his Master of Music degree from the University of Southern California in 1992, he was offered a European tour under the auspices of the Andres Segovia Institute. He settled in Germany in 1992 and founded Duo Grazioso with Axel Jacobsen.

Since 2001 Andrew has been on the faculty of NTCC where more than 500 students per year take the core curriculum Music Appreciation course he designed. He received his Doctorate from The University of North Texas and is currently working on a publication of new arrangements of Baroque music for guitar.

A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Zachary Mansell began playing the cello at age seven. He earned a Master of Music degree in Cello Performance and Suzuki Pedagogy at the Cleveland Institute of Music, with Mark Kosower and Melissa Kraut respectively. In the fall of 2017 he performed the Elgar Cello Concerto with the East Texas Symphony Orchestra, where he holds the principal chair.

Ute Miller is the principal violist of the East Texas Symphony, performs frequently with the Dallas and Fort Worth Symphony Orchestras and has appeared as a soloist with the East Texas Symphony Orchestra. A founder and the Executive Director of Mount Vernon Music Association, Ute performs with her husband Mark in the violin-viola ensemble Duo Renard, which was brought to Texas with a National Endowment for the Arts Rural Residencies chamber music grant.

A native of Nara, Japan, Yuko Mansell began playing the violin at age of three, and has been giving performances across North America and Japan. She holds both her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in violin performance from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, where she studied under renowned violinists Henryk Kowalski, Ik-hwan Bae, Koichiro Harada, and Federico Agostini, as well as with Stanley Ritchie on Baroque violin.

Besides serving as concertmaster of the East Texas Symphony Orchestra, violinist Mark Miller performs with the Fort Worth Symphony and other North Texas ensembles. He is a founder and president of Mount Vernon Music, a membership-based nonprofit bringing outstanding performances of chamber music to underserved audiences in East Texas, with an emphasis on outreach to school children in rural communities.

Memberships in MVM start at $25 and support all the organization's work, including scholarships for young musicians and outreach work for schools and seniors. Memberships are good for the year June 1 through May 31, and members receive discounts on ticket pricing. Details can be found at MVM's website.

Mount Vernon Music is a 501(c)(3) organization formed in 2005 to further the performance of classical and other fine music in rural East Texas. For information on the mission and concert schedule of Mount Vernon Music, and about historic Mount Vernon Music Hall, please visit www.mountvernonmusic.org.

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