LOCK HAVEN, Pa. - On Tuesday October 26 Lock Haven University will host a free recital by pianist Gary Boerckel of Lycoming College and violinist Greg Fulkerson of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. The concert, scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Price Performance Center, will feature music by Fritz Kreisler, Robert Schumann, Elliot Carter, and Camille Saint-Saens. The public is invited to this free event.

Gary Boerckel is a concert pianist, conductor, lecturer and chairman of the music department at Lycoming College. He has appeared as soloist in piano concertos by Schumann, Gershwin, Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach with the Jupiter (New York City) Symphony, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, the Williamsport Symphony, the Williamsport Chamber Orchestra and the Susquehanna Valley Symphony and has performed solo recitals—including lecture-recitals devoted to ragtime and early jazz—on college, university, and community artist series throughout the country.

Dr. Boerckel has conducted more than 30 musicals, operas, and operettas at Lycoming College and, in collaboration with the Williamsport Symphony Orchestra, he has produced Die Fledermaus and Amahl and the Night Visitors. He has been the director of the choir at St. Boniface [Williamsport] since 1993 and the chorus of the Gesangverein Harmonia since 2003. Both ensembles have performed requiems by Fauré, Mozart and Rutter at St. Boniface Church in Williamsport and Rutter’s Magnificat at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

At Lycoming College. Dr. Boerckel has been chairman of the Department of Music at 1983 and he served for thirteen years as director of the College’s Honors Program. He writes program notes for the Williamsport Symphony and gives pre-concert lectures for the WSO and the Susquehanna Valley Chorale. Since June 2004, Gary Boerckel has been the host of Music to My Ears, every Sunday at 1 pm on WVIA/WVYA public radio.

Internationally acclaimed violinist Gregory Fulkerson has had a flourishing career in both classical and contemporary music. It was as a major exponent of American contemporary music that Mr. Fulkerson rose to prominence, taking the First Prize in the International American Music Competition sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Kennedy Center (now sponsored by Carnegie Hall). As a result of that victory, Mr. Fulkerson began a very active performing career which included debuts in New York, London, Paris, Rome, and Brussels. He has performed over 30 concerti with orchestra, including the World Premieres of the John Becker Concerto with the Chattanooga Symphony, the Richard Wernick Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Roy Harris Concerto with the North Carolina Symphony (later performing and recording it with The Louisville Orchestra). Among the conductors under whose baton Mr. Fulkerson has played are Riccardo Muti, Zdenek Macal, Geoffrey Simon, Keith Lockhart, Bernard Rubenstein, Lawrence Leighton Smith, Gerhardt Zimmermann, Robert Spano, and Marin Alsop. He performed the title role in the 1992 revival of the Philip Glass opera, Einstein on the Beach, for a total of 48 performances on four continents, and later recorded the work for Nonesuch.

Gregory Fulkerson was born in Iowa City, Iowa. He studied at Oberlin College and at The Juilliard School, where his teachers included Paul Kling, David Cerone, Robert Mann, Ivan Galamian, and Dorothy DeLay. His debut recording (on New World Records) was chosen one of the year’s best by The New York Times, and his recording of the complete Violin Sonatas of Charles Ives (on Bridge Records) has become the standard for that repertoire; other Bridge recordings include the complete Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin by J.S. Bach (chosen one of the Best CDs of 2000 by The New Yorker magazine) and the Stephen Jaffe Violin Concerto (winner of the Olga & Serge Koussevitzky International Recording Award). His latest recording on the Albany Records label features the Paul Creston Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Albany Symphony Orchestra, David Alan Miller conducting.

This is the second time that Boerckel and Fulkerson have performed together at Lock Haven University. "Their previous concert here a couple of years ago was musically extraordinary and very well-attended, so when Gary happened to mention to me that Greg would be back in the area, I jumped at the chance to have them return to LHU, " said professor Dr. David Curtin of the LHU Performing Arts Department. "We invite everyone to come out to the Price auditorium and enjoy this free concert. Both Greg and Gary are amazing performers. You won't be disappointed!"