NORTH MEADOW HOUSE CONCERTS PRESENTS
STEPHEN LALOR, mandolin/domra
With guest artists Fiona Orenstein – mandolin, Beverly Davis – guitar,
and Mark Davis – various things with strings
Saturday October 13th, 2012 at 7:30pm
North Meadow Farm, 158 East Old Route 6, Hampton, CT
Cost: $20.00
Reservations are required as space is limited. For ticket reservations, please contact: markmdavis@yahoo.com
Stephen Lalor is the principal mandolinist for the Sydney (Australia) Opera and one ‘heluva a nice guy’. A composer and conductor as well as a featured soloist with many professional orchestras around the southwest corner of the Pacific Ocean, Stephen is coming to us direct from the annual convention of the Classical Mandolin Society of America, where he will be performing with his Sydney-based group PLEKTRA.
Stephen got his early training on a scholarship to study domra in Russia. (The domra is the 4-string Russian cousin to the mandolin and has its own school of virtuosic playing associated with it.) He has since gone on to a stellar career. Much of his music is informed by Russian and Balkan traditions.
Expect to hear original mandolin solos from Stephen, some music from TRIO 868, plus some of Stephen’s quartets.
Fiona Orenstein got her degree in mandolin from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music studying with Adrian Hooper. She is now a professional mandolinist and teacher living outside of Sydney. She also plays in the group PLEKTRA.
STEPHEN LALOR BIO:
Stephen Lalor studied at the University of New South Wales (M.Mus) and the Tchaikovsky Conservatorium Kiev where he undertook postgraduate studies in composition with Prof. G. Lyashenko, conducting and Russian mandolin/domra (with N.T. Lysenko). His studies in the USSR were supported by Australian and USSR government scholarships.
As a composer, his music covers a range of styles and genres, including opera, music theatre, musicals, ballet, film, choral, vocal, theme and instrumental music. His works have been performed and/or commissioned by major bodies including Opera Australia, the Melbourne Festival, the Queensland Ballet and Opera House Choral Concerts, as well as here in the USA by groups such as The Providence Mandolin Orchestra and TRIO 868.
A plucked string specialist, Stephen Lalor has been the Guest Principal Mandolinist with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra since the mid-1990s, featuring as solo mandolinist on CD releases of the Mahler Symphonies and Prokofiev’s Romeo&Juliet (SSO/Ashkenazy) and Gelmetti’s Cantata Della Vita. He has also performed and toured with orchestras in Asia – notably the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Singapore Symphony and the Malaysian Philharmonic.
He has performed with a range of ensembles over the past two decades: with SSO principal harpist Louise Johnson (for ABC Classics and ABC radio) , the Volatinsky Trio (CD Troika distributed through Planet/MGM), the Karpatsky Guitars (2004 Sydney Festival), the 101 Candles Orkestra (2005 Montreux Jazz Festival), and TRIO 868 (Sydney, July 2012). In 2010 he performed a concert of his own music at the BDZ Eurofest – Europe’s major mandolin & guitar festival – the only Australian to have been invited to do so.
Stephen Lalor has also performed and recorded with Aboriginal groups including the Stiff Gins and the Black Turtles. Former Head of Contemporary Performance at the Australian Institute of Music, he is on the staff of Sydney’s Eora Centre for Aboriginal Studies, Visual & Performing Arts.
VIDEOS:
“Campanella” by Stephen Lalor (TRIO 868 – during our last trip to Australia)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VJSrthOtwo
PLEKTRA playing one of Stephen’s Russian-inspired pieces:z
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbaVcmwB-70
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