In Performance: The LAGCC Music Faculty Concert Series
Event Description
LaGuardia Performing Arts Center presents:
In Performance: The LAGCC Music Faculty Concert Series
Featuring Lisa DeSpain & Marcel Rominger
Join us at LPAC’s Mainstage Theater for a special concert featuring talented pianists from LaGuardia Community College’s Music Performance and Music Recording Technology programs. Celebrate their artistry and the arrival of a new Steinway piano in an evening of live music. Featuring Lisa DeSpain & Marcel Rominger.
BIOS:
The BBC hails Marcel Rominger's playing as "equally polished, considered and characterful," and New York Concert Review described him as playing with “poise and elegance” when he made his Carnegie Hall debut January, 2009.
Mr. Rominger won the Crane Concerto Competition and North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra Concerto / Aria Competition and is the recipient of the Rose L. Greenblatt Award in Piano. He was also named the MTNA Arkansas State Winner of the Young Artist Category. Mr. Rominger was awarded an Honorable Mention at the William Garrison Competition in Baltimore Maryland. He was selected as the recipient for the Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island Excellence in the Performing Arts Award and was awarded a grant to perform a recital on Staten Island. Mr. Rominger is a supporter of new music and has participated in the New York City Electroacoustic Festival.
In addition to being a soloist, Mr. Rominger has appeared with the Potsdam Symphony Orchestra and the North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. His music has been featured on the radio station WDAV in Charlotte, NC and BBC’s World Update on World Service Radio. Mr. Rominger is also active as a collaborative pianist. Recently, he performed in the Fever production, “We Call it Tango,” which premiered in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Houston. He continues to give performances throughout the U.S., Europe and South America.
Mr. Rominger obtained a Bachelor of Music Degree in Music Education and Piano Performance from the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York in Potsdam. His teachers included Olga Gross and Paul Wyse. He received his Masters of Music from the University of Arkansas studying under acclaimed concert pianist Jura Margulis where Mr. Rominger held an assistantship in accompanying. He has studied with Hugo Goldenzweig at Mannes College of Music in New York, and he has also been coached by Seymour Bernstein and Leslie Howard. In 2019, Mr. Rominger completed his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Piano Performance at The City University of New York, Graduate Center. During his studies, he was a recipient of the CUNY Chancellor's Fellowship Award.
In addition to performing, Mr. Rominger is highly sought after as a scholar, teacher and masterclass presenter throughout the world. He has taught classes at Baruch College, College of Staten Island, and LaGuardia Community College. He has also served as the Director of Performing Arts at the Staten Island Conservatory of Music and is the founder of Sunnyside Piano Studio LLC in Queens, New York.
Event Date:
Thurs Nov. 12th at 7pm
Location:
Mainstage Theater
Ticket Price:
FREE w/ RSVP
Lisa DeSpain, jazz pianist/composer, is the recipient of an OPERA America Discovery Grant and an NEA Challenge America Award for That Hellbound Train, an American “deal with the devil” opera based on a story by Robert Bloch (Psycho) with libretto by David Simpatico (High School Musical.)
Her 2020 Zepick Modern Opera Commission, Staggerwing celebrates the historic win of female pilots in the 1936 Bendix Trophy Air Race. Other operas include Song of the Nightingale (On Site Opera), Men I’m Not Married To (Cleveland Opera Theater), and No Ladies in the Lady’s Book (Utah Opera).
She was awarded the ASCAP Commission Honoring the Duke Ellington Centennial for her big band composition, Dreaming in the Land of Blue Oz. Her additional (selected) compositions include The Bicycle Shoppe, commissioned by the US Air Force Band of Flight to honor the Wright Brothers Centennial, String Quartet No. 1, Rise & Fall, co-commission with the Cassatt String Quartet, and Symphonic Jazz Suite for Piano, winner of a Barlow Endowment Award.
She studied jazz piano in New Orleans with Ellis Marsalis and with Brazilian pianist Eliane Elias at Manhattan School of Music. Lisa is Professor of Music at LaGuardia Community College, can deadlift 210 pounds and ran away with the circus—twice.