UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center (ASC) will present the music of Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin performed by Young Concert Artist Cicely Parnas at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 29, 2013.
The performance is part of the Patty McDonald ArtPlay Parlor Music Series. Experience the music up close and personal in the grand parlor of the beautiful Victorian mansion known as ArtPlay, the ASC’s home for education and outreach, located on Birmingham’s Southside at 1006 19th St. South. Tickets are $37.50 and include beverages and hors d’oeuvres. For tickets call 205-975-2787 or visit www.AlysStephens.org.
First Prize winner of the 2012 Young Concert Artists (YCA) International Auditions, Parnas is the granddaughter of illustrious cellist Leslie Parnas. She began playing cello at age 4. At age 11 she made her concert debut with the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, and became an award-winning performer at age 13. Parnas has been heard on NPR’s “Performance Today” series and recently made her Carnegie Hall concerto debut performing the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto with the New York String Orchestra under the baton of Jaime Laredo. She performs on a 1712 Giovanni Grancino violoncello. The New York Times has recognized the 20-year-old performer for bringing “velvety sound, articulate passagework and keen imagination” to her performances.
On the program for her ArtPlay performance is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata No. 3 in A Major, Op. 69; Suite for Solo Cello by Gaspar Cassadó; Sonata No. 2 in F major, Op. 99, by Johannes Brahms; and Introduction and Polonaise brillante in C Major, Op. 3, by Frédéric Chopin. The performance is sponsored by Patty McDonald, Sterne Agee, UAB and Viva Health.
Parnas also will perform for hundreds of area schoolchildren for a free ArtPlay Meet the Artist school show earlier in the day at 10 a.m. in the ASC’s Jemison Concert Hall. The one-day residency is made possible in part by the Annaliese Soros Educational Residency Fund of YCA.