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Violinist returns home to play free concert
| Article published on Monday, Jan. 5, 2009 |
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ST. PETERSBURG - Classical musician Ryan Meehan, a rising violinist who has been featured on PBS's From the Top at Carnegie Hall television show and NPR's From the Top radio show, returns to his hometown of St. Petersburg to perform in concert on Saturday, Jan. 10 at 2 p.m. in Lewis House at Eckerd College.
The program will feature works by Mozart, Faure, Bach, Ponce, Dvorak and Ravel.
This recital is free and open to the public and is part of the Academy of Senior Professionals at Eckerd College (ASPEC) Young Artist Series.
No tickets or reservations are required. Eckerd College is located at 4200 54th Avenue South in St. Petersburg. Call 727-864-8834 or e-mail ASPEC Director Sharon Jaggard at jaggarsb@eckerd.edu for more information.
Meehan, 19, is a freshman at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, where he is a full scholarship student of Robert Lipsett at USC's Thornton School of Music.
At 15, he traveled from his hometown of St. Petersburg to Chicago to study violin under the world renowned violin pedagogues Almita and Roland Vamos, professors at Northwestern University and the Music Institute of Chicago. Since then he has performed on national radio and television broadcasts, most notably on PBS's From the Top at Carnegie Hall television series. He has also been featured as a soloist on National Public Radio's From the Top and WFMT's Introductions, a program on Chicago public radio.
In 2008, he received a National Merit Scholarship from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts (NFAA), the Illinois Regional Scholarship for violin performance, and became the youngest selected semi-finalist in the 2008 William Byrd International String Competition.
An avid chamber musician, Meehan and the members of the Ridere String Quartet took First Prize in the Rembrandt and St. Paul National Chamber Music competitions and won second place at the 2008 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. For the past two summers, he has attended the Aspen Music Festival as a scholarship student of Paul Kantor. Ryan has performed as a soloist and recitalist in U.S. and European concert halls including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Guiseppe Verdi Conservatory Hall, Harris Concert Hall in Aspen, and DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts at Notre Dame University.
Meehan performed for ASPEC's Young Artist Series in 2005, both as a soloist and with his former quartet the Strad String Quartet. He has studied previously with Amy Schwartz Moretti, former concertmaster of the Florida Orchestra.
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Article published on Monday, Jan. 5, 2009
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