Sunday, February 2, 2025 @ 3:00pm – 4:30pm (PST)
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$38.95 ($28.70 Folio member)

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum is delighted to welcome back performers pianist Michelle Huang and Soprano Susan Payne O’Brien, and welcome first time visiting performers violinist Dawn Posey and cellist Emily Hu for "Light and Dark: Musical Poetry in the Modern Eras."

This concert features a wide array of musical works inspired by poems of the 20th Century and the contemporary era. With poetry reading by poet and author Patrick Milian. 

Many of the works were written by females and underrepresented composers such as Florence Price, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Nadia Boulanger, and Jennifer Higdon. Explore the duality of light and dark, of love and anguish, reflected in the poetry and the music of the selected works.

About Michelle Huang, piano

A native of Taiwan, pianist Michelle Huang has performed and taught extensively throughout the U.S. as well as abroad in the Czech Republic, Italy, Switzerland, China, and Taiwan. She has appeared as soloist and guest artist in numerous recitals and has given lectures, workshops, and master classes. As a chamber musician, Michelle Huang has collaborated frequently with vocalists and instrumentalists as well as various chamber groups, such as the Mary L’Engle Ensemble; the River City Trio, the chamber group-in-residence at Friday Musicale in Jacksonville, Florida; the Jacksonville Symphony; and Richmond Symphony musicians.

https://www.michellehuangpiano.com/

About Dawn Posey, violin

Dawn Posey is an active international chamber musician, teacher and performer. She has performed with the Boston Conservatory Honors Quartet, Festival A Tempo in Caracas, Venezuela, the Chamber Music Festival of Amman, Jordan, Blossom Music Festival, and Tanglewood Music Center. Additionally, she has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in Washington, Missouri, Indiana, and England. She is a founding member of Kassia Ensemble, a mixed instrumentation chamber ensemble based in Pittsburgh made up entirely of female performers. Kassia Ensemble seeks to empower women through quality performance, collaboration, and outreach.

Dawn is a devotee of baroque performance practice, and a frequent guest artist with Chatham Baroque. She has toured with the ensemble to Ecuador and Los Angeles. Dawn was also a participant in the 2015 Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute.

Dawn received the Starling Scholarship at the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where her primary teacher was Dr. Won-Bin Yim. She has also studied with the late renowned string pedagogue, Miss Dorothy Delay, at Aspen Music Festival, Lynn Chang at the Boston Conservatory, Mrs. Almita Vamos in Chicago, and with concert violinist Rachel Barton Pine.

Dawn has been a member of the violin faculty at the Sherwood Conservatory, the Merit School of Music, the University of Evansville, St. Vincent College, and Slippery Rock University, and the Pittsburgh Music Academy. In Evansville, Dawn was the second violinist with the Eykamp String Quartet and Associate Concertmaster with the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra. She has served as assistant concertmaster with both the Youngstown Symphony and the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. She has also held the positions of associate principal second violin with the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra, Principal Second Violin of the Pittsburgh Opera Orchestra and principal second violin with Pittsburgh Ballet Theater Orchestra. Most recently, Dawn has been appointed Concertmaster with the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra and assistant concertmaster of the Northwest Sinfonietta.

http://www.poseyviolin.com/

About Patrick Milian, poetry

Patrick Milian is a queer, Cuban American writer and teacher based in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of The Unquiet Country, from Entre Ríos Books, and the chapbook Pornographies, from Greying Ghost. His poetry has appeared in periodicals like Poetry Magazine, Gulf Coast, Mid-American Review, and Denver Quarterly. His prose has appeared in Fourteen Hills, Solstice, Spectrum, Modernism / modernity, and elsewhere. His musical collaborations with the composer Emerson Eads are published by Northstar Music.

Milian holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Washington, where he was also a Joff Hanauer Fellow at the Simpson Center for the Humanities. He's tenured faculty in English at Green River College. He has been the recipient of the David A. Robertson Dissertation Fellowship, the Richard J. Dunn Teaching Award, and nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Lambda Literary Award.