USC Music Department Duo to have concert in Marion on April 28th

The Jesselson/Fugo duo’s 30^th anniversary concert will feature a piece written

by USC School of Music Dean Tayloe Harding that celebrates Marion Opera House

The University of South Carolina School of Music duo of Dr. Robert Jesselson and Charles Fugo, will celebrate 30 years of cello and piano performances in a concert at 3p.m. on Sunday, April 28 in the Marion Baptist Church on Main Street in Marion. The Jesselson/Fugo Duo will present a special commemorative concert, commemorating their first ever concert as a duo in October 1981 at the Marion Opera House.

A work composed for their 30th anniversary that celebrates the Marion Opera House will be a special, locally-related highlight of the concert, composer Tayloe Harding says.

This new work, titled At the Marion Opera House (2012), composed by Harding who is Dean of the School of Music at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, acknowledges the historical importance of the Opera House to the Marion County community.

It will be among several works that the renowned cello and piano duo from USC will perform at their 3 p.m. concert.

Earlier this year Harding said he was struck by the analogue between the impact that the Jesselson/Fugo duo has had on music audiences over its 30-year history and the impact that the Opera House has had on Marion County's citizens for 120 years. “… I decided to let my impressions of the place impact and influence my own conception of the work that these fellows asked me to write for them celebrating their 30th anniversary. So, each of the work's three movements has a very specific former public use of the Opera House as its title and inspiration," Harding said.

The April 28 concert is free and open to the public. For information, contact the School of Music at 803-777-4280 or the Arts Council Marion County at 843-423-0355. A reception in the Marion Opera House follows the concert. The Marion Baptist Church and Marion Opera House share a parking lot off Court Street in Marion.

JESSELSON / FUGO DUO

Since their formation in 1981, the Jesselson/Fugo Duo has been delighting audiences in the South with their impeccable ensemble playing and the rich literature for cello and piano. With performances at music festivals (Piccolo Spoleto, Coastal Carolina), universities (Clemson, University of Georgia, Furman, University of North Carolina, Louisiana State University) and for community organizations, the Jesselson/Fugo Duo has played throughout Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, New Jersey, and New York . Included in their repertoire are the major sonatas by Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Strauss, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Schubert, Boccherini, Valentini, and Rachmaninoff, and other major works for cello and piano, such as the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations, Chopin Polonaise Brillante, and Bruch Kol Nidre. Additionally, they perform numerous virtuosic showpieces, such as those by Popper, Cassado, Nin, Paganini and others. With special emphasis on the Romantic repertoire, the Duo also performs much music from the Baroque period, as well as contemporary composers such as Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Barber, Carter and Messaien.

ROBERT JESSELSON, cello

Robert Jesselson is a Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches cello and plays in the American Arts Trio and the Jesselson/Fugo Duo. In 2013 he was named as the Governor’s Professor of the Year by the S.C. Commission on Higher Education. In 2010 he was also named Mungo Distinguished Professor of the Year, the highest teaching award given by USC. He was the national President of ASTA, the American String Teachers Association, from 2000-2002. During his tenure as president he initiated the National Studio Teachers Forums (2000 and 2002), started the National String Project Consortium (with sites now at 40 universities and grants of $3.1 million), and began the planning for the first stand-alone ASTA national convention in 2003. He is now the Executive Director of the National String Project Consortium. Dr. Jesselson has performed in recital and with orchestras in Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States, and has participated in the Music Festivals at Nice, Granada, Santiago, Aspen, Spoleto and the Grand Tetons. His performance degrees are from the Staatliche Hochschule fuer Musik in Freiburg, West Germany, from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Paul Katz, and the DMA from Rutgers where he studied with cellist Bernard Greenhouse. He has been principal cello of the South Carolina Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Orquesta-Sinfonica de Las Palmas, Spain.

In 1983 Dr. Jesselson was in China for a six-month residency, one of the first Western cellists to visit that country. During that time he performed as soloist, gave master classes, and taught at several conservatories (including Beijing, Shanghai, and Canton). Dr. Jesselson is former conductor of the USC University Orchestra and the Columbia Youth Orchestra. For 15 years he was the director of the USC String Project, building the program into one of the largest and most prominent string education programs in the country. His pioneering work on this program was recognized in an article in the New York Times in December, 2003. ASTA awarded him the “Marvin Rabin Community Service” Award in 2009 for his work with the NSPC and teacher training. He is the recipient of the, the 2010 Mungo Distinguished Professor Award, the 2002 Cantey Award for Outstanding Faculty, the 1992 Verner Award, the 1989 S.C. Arts Commission Artist Fellowship, the 1995 Mungo Teaching Award, and the first SC ASTA Studio Teacher Award in 2005. Dr. Jesselson was the cello teacher at the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts for 17 years. In December, 2001 he led a delegation of string players and teachers to Cuba to begin professional contact with Cuban musicians. He has also taught at Sookmyung University in Korea, Sun Yat Sen University in Taiwan, University of Auckland in New Zealand, and at the Royal College of Music in London. This next summer Dr. Jesselson will be teaching cello at the Green Mountain Music Festival in Vermont and at the Cellospeak festival in Pennsylvania.

CHARLES FUGO, piano

Charles Fugo is currently Professor of Piano at the University of South Carolina School of Music, where he teaches applied piano and coaches chamber music. He received his baccalaureate degree at Oberlin Conservatory, with additional study at the Akademie des Mozarteums, Salzburg, Austria, and his MM and DM Performance degrees at Indiana University, where he was also awarded the Performer’s Certificate. During his study at Indiana he was named a state winner in the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artist Division. His principal teachers include Abbey Simon, Jorge Bolet, and Joseph Schwartz, with additional study under Winfried Wolf, Sidney Foster, and Robin McCabe and chamber music coaching under Menahem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio.

The recipient of the 2008 Cantey Outstanding Faculty Award given by the School of Music, he was also a staff member of the Anderson Piano Performance Camp and the summer honors program of the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, serving in the latter capacity for thirteen years. He was also official accompanist for the Josef Hofmann Competition, held in Aiken, South Carolina, over a five-year period. For over ten years he was sponsored by the South Carolina Arts Commission (Stage South Community Tour) as a member of both the Jesselson/Fugo Duo and the American Arts Trio. He has played collaborative recitals at New York City’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and with violist Lenny Schranze he has recorded the complete music for viola and piano by Robert Schumann for Centaur Records. He has also appeared with the South Carolina Philharmonic, the South Carolina Chamber Orchestra, and the Florence (SC), Charleston (SC) and Temple (TX) Symphony Orchestras. He has performed throughout the Southeast as well as in other areas of the United States, and has appeared on several statewide programs on South Carolina Educational Radio and Television as both soloist and chamber musician.

Composer TAYLOE HARDING

Tayloe Harding is a composer and music administrator, Dean of the School of Music at the University of South Carolina, and former Interim Dean of the South Carolina Honors College. A seasoned higher ed administrator of twenty-nine years, Tayloe Harding is passionate advocate for advancing the impact of higher education music study and experience on American communities and national society. He is devoted to an array of organizations whose missions are consistent with this advocacy. As President of the College Music Society from 2005-2006, he led the creation of the Engagement and Outreach Initiative where the efforts of the music professoriate are articulated with a variety of national constituencies, including other higher education disciplines and populations, music businesses and industries, and general audiences all in an effort to meet common musical and civic goals. He has been a founding member of the leadership teams for the Brevard Conference on Music Entrepreneurship (BCOME), the Round Top Roundtable: The Next Generation of Music Leadership in America and the independentNational String Project Consortium (NSPC).

As Dean at South Carolina he has brought a bold idea to fruition: to more fully prepare tomorrow’s professional musicians by combining conventional professional music study with a systematic curricular and co-curricular exploration of music advocacy, music entrepreneurship, and community engagement in music by forming the Carolina Institute for Leadership and Engagement in Music, the first such entity of its kind in American higher education. An active member of and consultant for NASM, CMS, SCI, and ASCAP, he is a frequent presenter on issues facing the future of university music units and their leadership, and remains active as a composer earning commissions, performances, and recordings for his works around the world.