St. John’s Organ Society is pleased to announce a concert on Thursday, August 29 at 7:30 pm, featuring Anatole Wieck (violin), Sarah Hoskins (cello), & Kevin Birch (organ) (Bangor, Maine) perform music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Gabriel Fauré, and Josef Rheinberger.
The concert is part of the 31st Summer Recital Series on Maine’s largest 19th-Century mechanical-action pipe organ, E. & G. G. Hook’s magnificent Opus 288, at St. John’s Roman Catholic Church in Bangor.
Born in Latvia, Anatole Wieck received his first musical education in Riga and Moscow. In the United States since 1973, he studied violin and viola at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, where he completed his Doctorate in Musical Arts working closely with Ivan Galamian, Lillian Fuchs, and Paul Doktor. He also studied baroque interpretation with Carol Lieberman at Boston University. He plays baroque viola, viola d’amore and baroque violin. Since 1986 Dr. Wieck has taught upper strings at the University of Maine and conducted the University of Maine Orchestra. He has performed and conducted in Europe, North and South America, and has participated in chamber music festivals such as Chamber Music/West (San Francisco), White Nights (St. Petersburg, Russia) and festivals in Montepulciano, Italy and Newport, Rhode Island. He was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in 2006 in Guatemala.
A collaborative musician at heart, Sarah Hoskins thrives in artistic partnerships of all kinds. While she has performed with musicians, dancers, painters and spoken word artists, chamber music remains her truest delight. She is also a devoted teacher and educator both in the studio as well as the classroom setting. She was a prize winner in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Society of American Musicians and pursued Cello Performance degrees at Wheaton College and DePaul University. She has recently relocated from Colorado to Maine where she teaches music to K-8 students, assists in church music, maintains a private studio, plays in the Bangor Symphony, and enjoys exploring the trails in Maine with her family of 7.
Kevin Birch began organ studies with Yuko Hayashi on the C. B. Fisk organ at Boston’s Old West Church in 1979 and earned the Bachelor of Music Degree at New England Conservatory (with Distinction in Performance) in 1987. He continued studies with Klaas Bolt at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam and later with Delores Bruch at the University of Iowa where he earned the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. Since 1992 he has served as Director of Music at St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor, Maine where he also serves as Executive Director of St. John’s Organ Society – a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and stewardship of E. & G. G. Hook’s Opus 288, built for St. John’s Church in 1860. He has performed solo recitals in the US, Canada, Europe, and in South America, and for several national conventions of the Organ Historical Society.
These hour-long recitals occur on Thursday evenings at 7:30. St. John’s Catholic Church is located at 207 York Street in Bangor. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.