News Release

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Two classical music virtuosi
to perform at Memorial Hall

CHAPEL HILL — Two musical masters, pianist Emanuel Ax and clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, will perform at 8 p.m. Dec. 10 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The concert in Memorial Hall will be part of the 2005-2006 Carolina Performing Arts Series.

Ax is one of the most highly regarded pianists in the world. He began playing piano at age six and won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition at age 25. He has won three Grammy Awards for duos with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and one for a trio with Ma and Stoltzman. Ax has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra in Brussels, Edinburgh, Lucerne and Salzburg. He has received the Avery Fisher Award, one of the highest honors for an individual American classical instrumentalist. His diverse repertoire ranges from the works of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), (Franz) Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) to key 20th century composers. The New York Times once described him as "a rare and marvelous artist."

Stoltzman, a two-time Grammy Award winning clarinetist, crosses the boundary between classical and jazz. Equally at home in either form, he was the first artist to feature jazz at the Bayreuth Opera House in Germany, the first wind player to win the Avery Fisher Prize, and the first to perform clarinet recitals at Carnegie Hall. The Washington Post once named him "an artist of indescribable genius."

The concert at UNC will feature works by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), Robert Beaser, who was born in 1954 and whose works have been performed around the world, and Lukas Foss, who was born in 1922 and began composing before he was 10 years old.

Single ticket prices range from $26 to $60 for the public and are $10 each for UNC students. Tickets are available by phone at (919) 843-3333 or from the Memorial Hall box office on Cameron Avenue, open Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Carolina students should call the box office for purchasing information. Series subscriptions also are available.

On performance days, the box office opens from 10 a.m. until intermission. For more information, e-mail performingarts@unc.edu or visit www.unc.edu/performingarts.

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Photo URLs: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/memorial/emanuel_ax.jpg
http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/memorial/richard_stolzman.jpg

Web sites: Ax: http://www.sonyclassical.com/artists/ax/
Stoltzman: http://www.franksalomon.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=17

Note: To request an interview with Emanual Ax, contact Anna Bulbrook at ICM in Los Angeles, 310-550-4000, abulbrook@icmtalent.com.

Carolina Performing Arts Series contact: Jennifer Smith, (919) 966-3834 or jwsmith@unc.edu
News Services contacts: Print, L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589; broadcast, Karen Moon, (919) 962-8595