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Youngstown State University's Dana School of Music and the University of Akron will collaborate on the Northeast Ohio Keyboard Festival, which starts Sunday.
Four concerts and two master classes are planned over four days featuring guest artist Mark Nixon and faculty artists Caroline Oltmanns, James Wilding, Misook Yun, Marcellene Hawk Mayhall, Alice Wang, Sean Baran, Mayumi Kikushi, Philip Thomson and Todd Gafke.
According to Oltmanns, professor of piano at Dana and co-director of the event, "We are thrilled to offer this piano festival for the fourth year to the communities of Youngstown and Akron, celebrating French composer Claude Debussy. The concerts, master classes and recitals are all dedicated to the beauty of keyboard instruments, to the sounds they are able to project and the stories we musicians get to tell through them."
Nixon has performed extensively in his native South Africa as a solo recitalist and pianist / accompanist as well as at numerous musical societies in the UK. He has released two CDs, a collection of songs recorded with soprano Erica Eloff and a recording of solo piano works by Liszt, Brahms and Debussy on Stringwise Records.
In 1999 he won the Guildhall School's Schubert and Ireland Prizes and the accompanist's prize in the English Singers and Speakers Union Song Competition in London. In 2006 he won the accompanist's prize at the Great Elm Vocal Awards held at Wigmore Hall, London.
Engagements have included concerts in Holland, France, Britain and multiple recital tours of South Africa with various singers and instrumentalists. He is a busy chamber musician, a member of the King's Piano Trio and is a founding member of London Song Circle.
Nixon will play the festival's opening concert at 3 p.m Sunday at the University of Akron's Guzzetta Recital Hall, Tickets are $12 for adults, $6 for students and free for UA students. The rest of the events are free and include:
• Monday -- Claude Debussy Tribute Concert at YSU's Bliss Recital Hall at 7:30 p.m.
• Tuesday -- Master classes with Nixon from 1 to 2 p.m. at Guzzetta Recital Hall and 5 to 6:30 p.m. at St. John's Episcopal Church, 323 Wick Ave., Youngstown, followed by a student concert at 7 p.m. at the church.
• Wednesday -- Keyboard Festival student recital at Butler Institute of American Art, 524 Wick Ave., Youngstown, at 12:15 p.m.