by Wendy Stiver, The Express

LOCK HAVEN, Pa. - Three of the area’s most talented classical musicians will perform together Sunday at 3 p.m. at Price Performance Center, Lock Haven University, presenting a concert for piano and strings.
The concert will feature works by Haydn, Beethoven, Schumann and Shostakovich. It is free and open to the public.
Pianist Hyun Ju Curtin (whose husband David is a music professor at LHU) will be joined on stage by Nicholas Hodges, concertmaster of the Williamsport Symphony Orchestra, and Andrew Rammon, principal cellist of WSO.
Musical selections will include piano trios by Haydn and Shostakovich, a sonata for piano and cello by Beethoven and a sonata for piano and violin by Robert Schumann, who was born 200 years ago this July.
The concert was made possible by a grant from the Northern Tier Cultural Alliance and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts which Dr. Curtin applied for on the universityás behalf last year. Earlier concerts in the same series included a duo-recital by David and Hyun Ju Curtin and a recent solo recital by Philadelphia-based pianist John Silva.
All of these performances featured LHU’s new Steinway concert grand piano, acquired when the campus became an “All-Steinway” university.
“We are grateful to everyone who has supported music and the arts at LHU over the years,and hope we get to see them on Sunday,” Dr. Curtin said.
“This will be the first time that Nick and Andrew have performed at LHU, and they are really extraordinary musicians. We are honored to have them on our stage, and I know it will be a fantastic concert.”
Korean-born pianist Hyun Ju Curtin is well known to local classical music lovers.
She earned her Artist Diploma in Piano Performance (as well as the requirements for a D.M.A.) from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and her Master of Music at the University of Wyoming School of Music where she won first prize in the Music Teachers National Association competition.
She has performed concerti, chamber music and solo recitals throughout the United States and in Korea where she has performed with the Mockpo Symphony, the Masan Symphony and twice with the Changwon Philharmonic.
An enthusiastic chamber musician, she was a founding member of the Escalante Piano Trio and has performed in the Grandin Festival in Cincinnati and on the Carnegie Concert Series in Michigan.
A Steinway Artist, she has served on the piano faculty of Soonchun National University, Changwon National University, Pusan Performing Arts School, Brigham Young University and Utah State University, and is a frequent lecturer at piano teachersá associations in Korea and in the U.S.
She recently made her Pennsylvania orchestral debut with the Pennsylvania Centre Orchestra, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5.
Hodges, a violinist and conductor, recently earned a Master of Music in Performance (Violin) and Orchestral Conducting at Penn State where he was a University Graduate Fellow and graduate assistant. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music in Violin Performance and Music Education, and was a Take Five Scholar at the University of Rochester.
From 2006 to 2009, he performed as concertmaster of the Penn State Philharmonic and as a section first violinist with the PCO. He was assistant conductor of the Penn State Philharmonic and music director of the Penn State Sinfonietta.
In the summer of 2007 he was concertmaster at the National Orchestral Institute in Washington, D.C. and concertmaster of the Austrian-American Mozart Academy Orchestra in Salzburg, Austria.
Last May he was asked to join the faculty of the State College Suzuki Program as a violin instructor and to serve as creative director.
Rammon is the cellist of the Grammy-nominated Eaken Piano Trio. The trio has performed across the United States, Europe and China and has had CDs featured on “Performance Today” and “All Things Considered.”
Two new CDs are in the works, featuring piano quartets by Schumann and Brahms and piano trios of Mozart and Haydn.
In October Rammon performed the world premiere of “Still the Fire” by John Lennon with saxophonist David Stambler, and this week recorded a recital with Naomi Niskala to be broadcast on WVIA.
Born in Las Vegas, he grew up in Mainz, Germany in a family of musicians.
During the summers he teaches at Pepperdine Universityás summer chamber music program in Heidelberg, Germany. He also teaches at Susquehanna, Bucknell and Mansfield universities.