Geller Scholarship Concerts is very proud to begin offering its first ‘PREformances’ of the year at the Rome Art and Community Center as part of its ‘Monday Night Music’ series on April 21, at 6:30 PM. Featured will be Brendan Merrick and Jo Ann Geller in a four-hands piano performance, and Merrick’s solo recital.
The duo program includes works by Bizet, Mouret, J.S. Bach, and Dello Joio, with solo piano works by Poulenc, J.S. Bach, Schumann, and Turina.
Brendan Merrick was born in Rome and began studies with Jo Ann Geller at age 5. In tenth grade, he won third place in the B Sharp Music Club competition and in 1992 commenced a piano performance and pedagogy major at Brigham Young University, where he also was awarded a scholarship. While at Rome Free Academy he also played French Horn in Herb Geller’s Wind Ensemble, as well as designing the artwork for its music concert programs.
Jo Ann Krant Geller is a native of Philadelphia where she studied piano at its Conservatory of Music. She is an alumna of the University of Pennsylvania in Musicology with continued piano studies at the Curtis Institute and in Munich, Germany. She presently oversees the Geller Scholarship concert series while maintaining a robust schedule teaching piano and providing concert musical accompaniment.
The full concert program includes George Bizet’s “Jeaux D’Enfantes” and two selections from “L’Ariosienne,” Joseph Mouret’s “Rondeau,” Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Siciliano,” “Arioso,” and “Sinfonia No. 4 in D Minor,” Norman Dello Joio’s “Fire Images,” Francis Poulenc’s “Mouvements Perpetuels,” Robert Schumann’s “Papillons,” and Joaquin Turina’s “Mujeres de Sevilla.”
This Geller PREformance is free with voluntary donations appreciated. All funds raised will benefit the Herb Geller Memorial Scholarships for graduating seniors at VVS and RFA who are pursuing degrees in music. Over the past several years more than $12,000 has gone to deserving students studying for careers in choral or instrumental performance and/or teaching.