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| Gregory Partain |
LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University music professor Greg Partain will perform a solo piano and composition recital Sunday, March 29, at 7:30 p.m. in Carrick Theater in the Mitchell Fine Arts Building, assisted by conductor Phylliss Jenness and the 26 singers of Musica Sacre Novissima, a group of professional musicians and other advanced singers from the Lexington area. The program will feature classic works for solo piano and the world premiere of Partain’s new a cappella choral piece, Stabat Mater Dolorosa. The program is free and open to the public.
In his 21 years on the concert stage, Partain has appeared as recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist throughout the United States, and has performed overseas in Poland, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Russia, Greece and Germany. In 1986, he was the national winner of the KMS Resident Artist Competition in Seattle, then won first prize in the Memphis Beethoven Piano Sonata Competition, second prize in the International Bartok-Kabalevsky Competition in Virginia and was a finalist in the Concert Artists Guild New York Competition.
Partain’s wide-ranging repertoire spans music of four centuries. His first solo CD (2001) contains works by William Byrd, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and Ravel. Partain’s second CD, released in 2007 under the MSR Classics label, contains works by Rachmaninoff, D. Scarlatti, Brahms, Beethoven, and Transylvania University professor Larry Barnes (Toccata: Act of War, composed for Partain).
In 1998, Partain made his formal composing debut at the Kentucky Music Teachers Association (KMTA) state conference with the premier of Two Songs for Harp and Soprano on Poems of William Butler Yeats. Lux aetera, an a cappella choir piece, received its premier the following year. In 2003 Partain premiered his song cycle based on love poems of Jalaluddin Rumi, the 13th-century Islamic mystic. As the KMTA Commissioned Composer for 2005, he composed a nine-movement concert Requiem for a cappella choir, based on traditional Latin texts. For his collective works, the Kentucky Arts Council awarded Partain a 2007 Al Smith Professional Assistance grant.
Phylliss Jenness has more than 50 years of experience as a professional singer, conductor and educator. She was professor of voice at the University of Kentucky from 1954-1993. She has performed annual recitals, appeared in numerous operas, musicals, and oratorios and founded the UK opera program (1955), directing it intermittently until 1976. In 1958, she founded the Lexington Singers, conducting that important ensemble until 1976, with numerous collaborations with the Cincinnati Symphony over several years.
Recently elected to the Carl A. Lampert Music Hall of Fame in recognition for outstanding contributions to the University of Kentucky School of Music and the Hall of Fame of UK Friends of Music, Jenness was also named a 2006 award winner in the Downtown Lexington Corporation Kentucky Stars Program.
For more information, contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120.