Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Two free Mississippi State piano concerts this weekend will highlight the university's ninth annual Brazilian Festival.
To begin at 7:30 p.m. Friday [March 4] and 10 a.m. Saturday [the 5th], the programs will take place in the Robert and Freda Harrison Auditorium of the Giles Architecture Building. The Golden Triangle Music Forum is co-sponsoring the event organized by associate professor Rosangela Sebba and others in the MSU music department.
Guest artist Ilka Vasconcelos Araujo of Ft. Worth, Texas, will be featured Friday night. A first-prize winner of several competitions, the Brazilian native has performed and led classes in a variety of venues throughout her homeland, several European countries and the United States.
Saturday morning's recital will include MSU music majors and Columbus piano students of veteran instructor Edna Mae McCoy. A master class follows in the same location.
Araujo is a faculty member in musicology and piano at Texas Wesleyan University. In addition to private instruction, she also is a top officer of the Ft. Worth Music Teachers Association.
She holds degrees from the State University of Ceara in Brazil, as well as master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Florida. (For more, visit www.txwes.edu/music/music/IlkaAraujo.htm.)
For more information on the 2011 Brazilian Festival, contact Sebba at 662-325-2854 or rys3@colled.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.