Mack to debut in Skidmore Orchestra concert Oct. 17

One of Skidmore's newest faculty members, award-winning concert pianist and composer Evan Mack, will be a guest artist performing with the Skidmore College Orchestra in concert Sunday, Oct. 17.

Free and open to the public, the concert will begin at 4 p.m. in the Arthur Zankel Music Center's Ladd Concert Hall. Tickets are required for this free performance and may be reserved online.

Mack, who has won numerous awards for both his compositional work as well as his piano prowess, will open the program performing works for solo piano by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Zaidel-Rudolph, and Ginastera. The Skidmore College orchestra, under the direction of Anthony Holland, will join Mack on stage after intermission to present Haydn's D major Concerto for piano and orchestra. The orchestral part of the program will also include Haydn's "March for the Royal Society of Musicians" and a marvelously colorful suite of dances from Manuel de Falla's ballet "The Three-Cornered Hat," one of his most famous and fun classical works with a strong Spanish flair.

Mack is the fall 2009 Selection Winner of the National Association of Composers, San Francisco, and the UCM New Music Festival for his "Dream of Freedom," and the Selection Winner of the 2010 SCI Region IV Conference for "American Groove."

This year, his opera, Angel of the Amazon, has been performed in New York City and San Francisco and is slated for full development and production by Encompass New Opera Theatre. The focus of the opera is Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old nun from the order of Notre Dame de Namur, Dayton, Ohio, who was brutally murdered in the town of Boa Esperanza, located in the Brazilian rainforest. The opera depicts her life's work, her devotion to her mission with Brazilian peasant farmers, and the events that sent her on a path of martyrdom.

Mack received a DMA degree from the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. In 2001 he won the Vanderbilt University Concerto Competition, and later performed Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto with the Vanderbilt Symphonic Orchestra. He has participated in master classes by presented by such acclaimed musicians as George Crumb, Seymour Lipkin, Emanuel Ax, and Diane Andersen.