Published: November 19, 2009 08:09 am      

Hibler, UCO string faculty performing in Ada

In honor of Felix Mendelssohn’s 200th birthday, string faculty from the University of Central Oklahoma will join pianist Starla Hibler, professor of music at East Central University, in a concert at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 22, at the Ada Arts & Heritage Center at 14th and Rennie in Ada. Admission is free.

Dr. Ralph Morris, Dr. Tess Remy-Schumacher and Theodora Morris of UCO and Hibler will perform Mendelssohn’s “Sonata in C minor for viola and piano” and “Piano Trio in D Minor.”

Mendelssohn was born in 1809, 100 years before ECU was established, and died in 1847.

Hibler has taught at ECU since 1991. She is active nationally as a soloist, accompanist and chamber music performer. As an active member of the Oklahoma Music Teachers Association, College Music Society and Oklahoma Federation of Music Clubs, she serves regularly as a clinician and adjudicator.

She holds doctor of musical arts and master of music degrees in piano performance from the University of North Texas where she studied with Joseph Banowetz. She received a bachelor of music degree in piano performance from Illinois Wesleyan University and has studied at the Vienna Conservatory in Vienna, Austria.

In 1987, Hibler was the first-prize and recital-prize winner of the Ernst Krenek Competition/Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition held in Palm Desert, Calif. In 2001, she was honored as the “Outstanding Adan in the Arts” by the Ada Arts Council.

During the summer of 2009, she was artist in residence at the Inspiration Point Fine Arts Colony’s Piano and String Camp in Eureka Springs, Ark. She also serves as organist/choirmaster for St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Ada.

Dr. Ralph Morris, director of the UCO Symphony Orchestra, teaches viola and chamber music and is a member of the UCO Faculty String Quartet. While living in Austria for eight years he specialized in the performance of baroque and classical music, performing with the Capella Academica Wien and the Wiener Barock Solisten in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. He also performed throughout Europe and in Japan as a member of the orchestras of the Wiener Volksoper, the Theater an der Wien, and the Mozart Oper Salzburg.

Schumacher was born in Cologne, Germany, and is a professor for cello and chamber music at UCO. She has won first prizes in Germany’s Jugend musiziert, New York’s International Artist Competition (string division) and Rome’s Carlo-Zecchi Competition.

She has been a concert soloist for several years, performing in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States. She just released a CD of cello compositions by Sam Magrill and recently recorded the Trios by Brahms and Magrill and Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. She has completed the first volume of the Suites for Cello Solo by Johann-Sebastian Bach.

Theodora Morris is adjunct instructor of violin and recorder at UCO and at Rose State College and is a member of the UCO Faculty String Quartet. A native of Vienna, Austria, she taught strings and recorder in the Vienna public schools for 10 years and performed regularly with the Capella Academica Wien, the Stadtmusik Wien, the orchestras of the Wiener Volksoper and Theater an der Wien, and the Mozart Oper Salzburg.

Ralph and Theodora Morris have been featured as soloists with orchestras in Lawton, Oklahoma City, Ashville, N.C., and Bangkok, Thailand, and at UCO. During the summers they serve on the faculties of the UCO Chamber Music Camp and the Inspiration Point String Camp in Eureka Springs, Ark.