Ying Quartet to collaborate with GVSU faculty for Fall Arts Celebration

GVL / Courtesy - Caitlin Cusack 
Ying Quartet

Caitlin Cusack

GVL / Courtesy – Caitlin Cusack Ying Quartet

Nicole Bobb

The second of six events for the Fall Arts Celebration at Grand Valley State University commences with a musical performance Monday, Sept. 12 at 7:30 p.m. in the Cook-DeWitt Center.

The performance will begin with Julianne Vanden Wyngaard, university carillonneur, followed by the Ying Quartet. To conclude the performance, members of the GVSU music faculty will join the Ying Quartet in a collaboration to perform Beethoven’s Septet. GVSU music faculty members include Richard Britsch on the horn, Arthur Campbell on clarinet, Michael Hovnanian playing double bass and Danny Phipps on bassoon.

“As concert-goers walk to the Cook-DeWitt Center for the first Fall Arts Celebration event of 2016, they can expect to be serenaded by the bells of the Cook Carillon, played by university carillonneur Julianne Vanden Wyngaard,” said Caitlin Cusack, publicity and recruitment director for the department of music and dance.

This year marks the 14th season of the Fall Arts Celebration. Prior to the founding of the Fall Arts Celebration, separate departments held their individual fall events and performances. They were brought together to promote community, while still advocating for the individual artistic mediums on their own.

Fall Arts Celebration chair Teri Losey said each event highlights various artistic mediums that are offered at GVSU.

The dates of each event are spread out throughout the season intentionally to give students at GVSU and the surrounding community the best opportunity to attend.

The events are promoted statewide through websites, newspapers, magazines and other advertising.

“The concert features the Ying Quartet, an ensemble praised for brilliant, communicative performances and a fearlessly imaginative view of chamber music in today’s world,” Cusack said. “Concert-goers can expect to hear a masterful performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet ‘Opus 18, No. 6 in Bb major’ with musical insight and vivid imagination.”

The Ying Quartet is just one of many talented performance groups the Fall Arts Celebration committee has invited to GVSU this year.

“The committee works hard to bring in people who are unique from all over the world. It’s a taste of something (the audience) may never (otherwise) experience,” Losey said. “An engineering student might not think that they would enjoy some of the artistic offerings of the celebration, but they could really enjoy something like that. That’s what a university campus is about, to me.”

For more information on this event and other upcoming Fall Arts Celebration events, visit www.gvsu.edu/fallarts.