Prince of Peace Episcopal Church will present Professor Michael Jorgensen in concert at the church on Tuesday, May 12, at 7 p.m. Violinist Jorgensen will be accompanied by Steve Beck on the piano, presenting “The Saint Georges Project.” The program, featuring the music of French composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint Georges, is free and open to the public. Free, off-street parking is available at the rear of the church at 20 West High Street in Gettysburg.
This multidisciplinary work combines music from Black composers across generations, personal storytelling, historical context, and multimedia to paint a picture of life for artists of color throughout history and today.
The program includes Saint Georges’s three violin sonatas, and two new works written for the project by composers Evan Williams and Shawn Okpebholo.
Professor Jorgensen says: “As a twenty-first-century musician and educator, my responsibility is to contextualize the music of the past and present for my audience and students. All great art is created by humans who live interesting and complicated lives not so different from our own. I aim to make older music feel as fresh as something written yesterday, and I want to remove the distance that many feel towards classical music.”
Michael Jorgensen is the Assistant Professor of Orchestral Strings at Lehigh University, where he serves as the concertmaster of the Lehigh University Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also taught violin at Middle Tennessee State University, Covenant College, and the Wyoming Center for the Arts in their Touchstone program for at-risk youth.
A dedicated recitalist and chamber musician, Dr. Jorgensen has performed recitals at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, the London School of Contemporary Dance, the Taft Museum of Art Chamber Music Series, Gettysburg College, and has been a returning guest artist to Middle Tennessee State University. As a string quartet performer, he has been the first violin of the Eppes String Quartet and founded the Frequency String Quartet, a new music group with an education and community-building mission that was described as “a gifted and stimulating foursome” by Cincinnati classical music reviewer Mary Ellyn Hutton.
Professor Jorgensen is also Director of Boston University’s Violin Workshop at the Tanglewood Institute. Dr. Jorgensen holds a bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music, a master’s from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and a doctorate from Florida State University.
Source: Prince of Peace Episcopal Church