Afternoon Music Presents Violinist Eric Wyrick & Friends on March 12

Violinist Eric Wyrick, concertmaster of the New Jersey Symphony, leads a string quartet of outstanding musicians in Afternoon Music's first concert of the 2023 season, at 3 p.m., Sunday, March 12, at Beacon Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Summit, 4 Waldron Ave. (at Springfield Avenue).

Other performers are Alisa Wyrick, violin; Brett Deubner, viola; and Tomoko Fujita, cello. The audience is invited to meet the performers at a reception following the concert.

The program is entitled Building Bridges: Lush and lyrical connections from European classical to American folk music. It includes Felix Mendelssohn's Quartet in E Minor, Op. 44 No. 2 and Antonín Dvorák's American String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op 96. In addition, the ensemble will play a piece from Five Folksongs in Counterpoint by Florence Price (1887-1953), the first African American female composer to gain national status.

Tickets are $25 online and $30 at the door and are available now on Afternoon Music's website, www.afternoonmusic.org. Students are welcome free.

Eric Wyrick started playing the violin at 4, studied at Juilliard and began his varied orchestral career at the age of 14 with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. In addition to his role with the New Jersey Symphony, he has been Concertmaster of the American Symphony, Eos and L’opera Francais de New York.

Since 1988, he has been a member and frequent leader with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which is recognized for being the first notable ensemble of its kind to institute democratic leadership. A founding performer at the Bard Music Festival, Wyrick has recorded for Bridge Records, Vanguard and, with Orpheus, Deutsche Grammophon.

Acclaimed as both a violinist and violist, Alisa Wyrick is an active orchestral and chamber musician in the New York area. She most recently played as a guest with the New York City Ballet Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic and was a member of the New York City Opera Orchestra beginning in 2006.

Born in New York City, she earned bachelor of music and sociology degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory. As part of a bicoastal family network of chamber players, her musical career has taken her around the world to perform a wide variety of chamber music. She lives in a musical household in South Orange with her husband Eric Wyrick and their two daughters, who play cello, violin and viola.

American violist Brett Deubner has performed worldwide as an important viola soloist, appearing with more than 80 orchestras in 11 countries and winning praise for "the warmth and sparkling" quality of his playing. To date, he has had more than 50 viola concertos composed and dedicated to him and has made more than 20 critically-acclaimed CDs.

Last year, he received the 2022 Global Music Awards Silver Medal for "Transfiguration," a collaborative recording with composer Stanley Grill involving Pandemic-era remote recording sessions. In the CD, Grill's multi-instrumental chamber pieces were transformed into an intimate collection of multi-layered works for viola.

Hailed as "first-rate" by the Boston Globe, cellist Tomoko Fujita enjoys an active musical life as soloist, chamber musician and educator. She has collaborated with such esteemed artists as Itzhak Perlman, dancer Wendy Whelan and members of the Cleveland, Emerson and Juilliard string quartets and played with the Bryant Park Quartet as a founding member during its ten-year history.

She is currently a member of the Benzaiten Trio and the New York Chamber Music Co-Op, a performance collaborative that seeks to explore issues of social justice in the context of classical music programming. She is assistant professor at the Cali School of Music at Montclair State University, and coordinator of the Cali Pathways Project, an initiative to support talented high school musicians from underrepresented and/or low-income backgrounds. She also teaches at Princeton University and coaches with the New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program.

Afternoon Music's second concert of 2023 will be on Sunday, May 7, with a performance by internationally celebrated jazz pianist Dan Nimmer, pianist of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, with David Wong, on double bass.

Afternoon Music is a 40-year-old concert series, a supporting organization of Beacon Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Summit. Donations are tax-deductible. Misa Iwama, Beacon's Director of Music Ministry, is Afternoon Music's artistic director.

The series is funded in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, through a grant administered by the Union County Division of Cultural & Heritage Affairs.

For Covid safety protocols, refer to Beacon's website at www.summitbeacon.org/safety-protocols, where guidelines will be updated on a regular basis.

For further information, visit www.afternoonmusic.org or call 908-248-2773.