February 13, 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                  

CONTACT: Brenda Lange
Associate Director of Communication
News and Media Relations
215.248-7110

Chestnut Hill College to Host Steinway Artist Concert

Karen Walwyn, internationally known pianist and composer, will perform Sunday, February 26 at 3 p.m. in CHC’s East Parlor.

Witness beautiful music being made at Chestnut Hill College during the 2017 Steinway Artist Concert featuring Karen Walwyn, D.M.A., on Sunday, February 26, at 3 p.m. in the East Parlor of CHC’s St. Joseph Hall.

Dr. Walwyn is a concert pianist, composer and an Albany Recording Artist who recently received the Award of Excellence for her recording of her composition titled “Reflections on 9/11.” She performs around the world in international concert halls in Johannesburg, South Africa, London, Nice, France, the Virgin Islands to name a few. She also has appeared recently on NPR and PBS.

During her performance at CHC, she will feature works by Florence Price, the first African-American female composer to gain national status (1881-1953).

“Her music is very precious, because, although she lived in Arkansas during difficult racial tragedies, she wrote music that was extraordinarily beautiful,” Dr. Walwyn wrote in an email.

“Her music spins out stories of the times (both the difficult and beautiful) but her harmonies and melodies are almost always so gentle and gorgeous, one would think she was telling bedtime stories.”

Dr. Walwyn will conclude her program with a work she composed to honor the lives lost in Charleston, S.C., last year at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (often referred to as Mother Emanuel Church). She will perform the first of the piece’s five movements, which is titled, “A Journey from Afar.”

A Howard University Associate Professor and a 2011 Mellon Faculty Fellow at the John Hope Franklin Institute of Duke University, she composed her debut choral work titled “Of Dance & Struggle: A Musical Tribute on the Life of Nelson Mandela” commissioned and performed by the Elon University Choral.

Chestnut Hill College received the “All Steinway School” status in 2011. Such notable status is conferred by Steinway and Sons to institutions in which all the pianos used (a minimum of 15) are made by Steinway. CHC’s concert series began in March 2012 and each year, a world-renowned performer who endorses the quality of a Steinway instrument has been invited to perform on campus.

“It is a privilege to host pianists of this caliber at Chestnut Hill College,” says Sister Kathleen McClosky.

The concert is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Sister Kathleen McClosky, M.M.Ed., at  kmcclosk@chc.edu or 215-248-7194 and visit www.karenwalwyn.com.

Photo:  Karen Walwyn, D.M.A.

###

About Chestnut Hill College

Celebrating more than 90 years of tradition, Chestnut Hill College is a four-year, coed Catholic college in the Ignatian tradition that offers a traditional liberal arts undergraduate program as well as accelerated undergraduate degrees, master’s and doctoral programs. The College has been rated by US News & World Report as among the best master’s universities in the North, as among the best Northeastern colleges by The Princeton Review, and has been classified as selective by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Since 1924, the College has offered a rigorous curriculum that provides students with a broad background in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. The goal of Chestnut Hill College has been to prepare students for life’s challenges by helping them to grow intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and socially. http://www.chc.edu/