Exeter, NH (June 19, 2006)—The Friends of the Academy Library of Phillips Exeter Academy will host a Summer Concert Series in Rockefeller Hall in the Class of 1945 Library, located on Front Street in Exeter. These six concerts are all free and open to the public, and will begin at 7 p.m.  
 
The first of the six concerts will be on Wednesday, June 28 at 7:00 p.m. Pianists Jung Mi Lee and Jon Sakata will perform in a duo piano recital entitled “Celebrating Mozart’s 250th Anniversary.” The program will feature three masterworks by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for piano four hands: the epic Sonata in F major, K. 497; the Fantasy in F minor, K. 608, which was one of Mozart’s final works for keyboard; and a transcription from 1793 by Johann Wenzel of the Symphony No. 36 in C major “Linz,” K. 425.

Lee and Sakata, both members of the Academy’s music faculty, are active musically in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. This summer, they will perform all-Mozart recitals in Austria, Hungary and Slovakia as part of the “In Celebration of Mozart” tour co-sponsored by Phillips Exeter Academy, National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. In June 2005, they were the featured guest artists of the premiere week of contemporary music at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre–Brazil).

The second concert on Wednesday, July 5, will present “An Evening of Traditional Irish Music and Song,”featuring Irish Harper Regina Delaney and the band Réagánta. This concert also includes performances by Claudia Altemus and Gene Durkee.

Delaney is an Irish harper, singer and dancer. As an artist on the N.H. State Council on the Arts roster and the MainArts commission, she performs and teaches in schools throughout the state where she introduces students to Irish poetry, music, song, dance, history and literature. Delaney performs regularly in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and is a regular seisiun player—an Irish performance session of musicians and singers. She is an active member of the Hanafin-Cooley branch of the Boston Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann, an international organization founded in Ireland in 1951 to preserve traditional Irish music and culture. Musical partner Altemus will perform on a penny whistle#a popular musical flute in Ireland, England and Scotland#with Durkee performing on guitar. The group will also sing several well-known traditional Irish songs. 

On Wednesday, July 12, the Paul Sullivan Trio will perform in the series’ third concert, an evening of original and standard jazz compositions with bass player Jim Howe and percussionist Bill Friederich. Sullivan, a 1973 alumnus of Phillips Exeter Academy, is an accomplished pianist, composer, director, conductor and performer in jazz clubs, on- and off-Broadway theater, and in concert halls throughout the world. Howe is the director of “Sunday Night Jazz” at the Press
Room in Portsmouth, NH. Friederich, also known as The Reverend William J. Friederich, has played with U.S. Army bands in Colorado and Europe. His musical repertoire includes jazz and blues.

The fourth concert on Wednesday, July 19, will be the performance of “Pastoral Airs—A Celebration of the Countryside,” featuring clarinetist Christine Fell, soprano Alysoun Kegel and pianist Arlene Kies in music by Schubert, Cooke, Beethoven, Louis Cahuzac and others. 

Fell was a member of the former clarinet quartet “4 of 1.” She also performs as a soloist and chamber music player in the area and recently performed in concert at the Duxbury (Mass.) Art Complex Museum with violinist Paul MacDowell and Kies. For the past two years, she has been an adjunct music instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy, and currently is on the music faculty of the Academy’s summer school program. Kegel is a 1999 alumnus and teaching fellow at the Academy, who recently graduated from Yale University with degrees in Music and English. Kies performs widely as a recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber pianist. She is a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and currently is a member of the piano faculty at UNH.

The fifth concert on Thursday, July 27, will be “The Flirtatious Flute,” featuring flutist Julia Scolnik, a 1974 alumnus of Phillips Exeter Academy, who will perform works by Poulenc, Gaubert, Czerny and Bizet with pianist Randall Hodgkinson.

Praised by The Boston Globe for her “tonal enchantment,” Scolnik has performed as principal flute with many of Boston’s leading orchestras including the Boston Pops, Boston Ballet and Boston Lyric Opera. Presently, she teaches at the Longy School of Music. Hodgkinson, a grand prizewinner of the International American Music Competition, has performed with orchestras in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Boston, Cleveland, Italy and Iceland. He is an artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society and the ensemble, Mistral, and serves on the faculties of both the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and the Longy School in Cambridge, MA.

The sixth and final concert on Wednesday, August 2, will be the Tony Carelli Quintet, with local saxophonist Tony Carelli; Ken Cervenka, trumpet/flugelhorn; Geraldine Dimarco, piano; Barry Smith, acoustic bass; and Peter Moutis on drums. The group will present musical selections from the hard-bop/post-bop era, including compositions of Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan, Joe Henderson and others.

Carelli led his own jazz groups in Boston and New York, and has played with such jazz greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Phil Woods, Tom Harrell and James Moody. Cervenka has performed with Jerry Bergonzi, Jaki Byard, Alan Dawson, Billy Pierce, Mike Stern, Manhattan Transfer, Jon Faddis, Mick Goodrick, Fred Hersch, The Temptations, James Williams and Phil Woods. He has taught at the Berklee College of Music since 1981. Known for her unique combination of vocal and pianistic styles, Dimarco has appeared with Greg Hopkins, Miles Donahue, Bruce Gertz, Bob Gullotti and Bob Kaufman at numerous Boston jazz venues. Smith has performed and toured with Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman, Gerry Mulligan, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis and the Red Rodney/Ira Sullivan Quintet. He has taught bass at the Berklee College of Music since 1986. Moutis, a 1976 alumnus of Phillips Exeter Academy, has appeared with Bergonzi, Peter Bernstein, Hopkins, Sullivan, Bill Dobbins, Bob Cooper, Bill Lowe and the Boston Repertory Jazz Orchestra, Salim Washington and Roxbury Blues Aesthetic.

All six concerts will begin at 7 p.m., and are free and open to the public. For more information, please call Academy Librarian Jacquelyn H. Thomas at (603) 777-3328. For directions to Phillips Exeter Academy, call (603) 777-4330. For more information on other events, contact the Phillips Exeter Academy public events line at (603) 777-4309, or the Academy website at www.exeter.edu. For directions to Phillips Exeter Academy, call (603) 777-4330.

Phillips Exeter Academy is a coeducational, independent preparatory school that was founded in 1781 and originated the system of instruction known as Harkness teaching in 1931. In the spirit of its charter to foster both goodness and knowledge, students come from a wide variety of geographic, economic, racial and religious backgrounds. The diverse student body comes from approximately 46 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 25 foreign countries.

Contact:           Julie Quinn                                            Famebridge Witherspoon
                        (603) 777-3450                                    (603) 777-3450
                        jquinn@exeter.edu                          fwitherspoon@exeter.edu