FSUCO Offers Nov. 9 Concert
The Fairmont State University Community Orchestra will present a free concert featuring three of the orchestra's principal players at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9, at the Marion County Senior Center, 105 Maplewood Drive, Fairmont.
Violinist Mikylah Myers McTeer and flutists Dorothy Skidmore and Ruth Brooks will be the soloists in Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, a work known for its bright and cheerful style.
Dr. Mikylah Myers McTeer is assistant professor of violin at West Virginia University. She maintains an active chamber music and solo performance schedule, which this year includes world premier performances at the College Music Society's national conference in Atlanta, solo appearances with Pennsylvania's River City Brass Band and a performance of Kurt Weill's Violin Concerto with the WVU Chamber Winds. McTeer received her doctoral and master's degrees from the University of Houston's Moores School of Music, where she studied with renowned violinist Fredell Lack. During her time in Houston, McTeer regularly performed with the Houston Symphony and the Houston Grand Opera. She was also a violinist with the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Fla. McTeer was previously concertmaster of the San Juan Symphony and assistant professor of violin and viola at Fort Lewis College. She was also the founder, artistic director and conductor of the Durango Youth Symphony. An award-winning chamber musician, McTeer performs with WVU's faculty piano quartet. She was formerly the violinist of the Red Shoe Piano Trio at Fort Lewis College and the violinist of the Moores Piano Trio in Houston, Texas, which was the silver prize winner at the 2000 Carmel Chamber Music Competition. McTeer has performed internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary.
Dorothy Skidmore received Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in performance from the University of Illinois. After completion of studies in Freiburg, Germany, on a Fulbright Grant, she returned to the United States. She married Bill Skidmore in 1964, and they moved to College Park, Md., where her husband taught at the University of Maryland. Skidmore quickly established herself as a flutist, and she taught at The Catholic University of America and Montgomery College. She also played in the National Gallery of Art Orchestra, the National Ballet Orchestra and the John F. Kennedy Center Orchestra. She has been the flute teacher at FSU for 14 years, and she has a large studio of private students. She has performed in West Virginia and surrounding states as solo flutist and with the Monongahela Trio. She has appeared with the Fairmont State University Community Orchestra as soloist on three previous occasions. Her principal teachers were Charles Delaney, Gustav Scheck and Albert Tipton.
Ruth Brooks is a graduate of the University of Iowa with a Bachelor of Music in Flute degree and an additional year of postgraduate study with Betty Bang Mather. She has played in chamber groups and symphony orchestras in Iowa, Arkansas, Minnesota, New York City and West Virginia. Brooks has been a member of the FSUCO since its inception, is a member of the Community Arts Orchestra at WVU and the Flutissimo Choir in Clarksburg. She played the FSU Festival of Chamber Orchestras series and was a member of the Con Brio Wind Quintet. For decades she has been an instructor of flute in the Community Music Program at FSU. A member of the Fairmont Chamber Music Society, she has been an officer and board member since its charter in 1981.
Other works on the program will include Felix Mendelssohn's rarely played Overture, The Beautiful Melusine, Claude Debussy's Petite Suite and the Eighth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven. The concert will be conducted by John Ashton, and The Friends of the Symphony will provide refreshments at intermission and at the close of the concert.
