Gwen Detwiler to perform with College Symphony

Gwendolyn Coleman Detwiler

David Rudge

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 heads the program for the Saturday, Oct. 20, concert of the SUNY Fredonia College Symphony at 8 p.m. in King Concert Hall.

The concert is free and the public is invited to attend.

The featured soloist for the Mahler is soprano and Assistant Professor Gwendolyn Coleman Detwiler of the School of Music. Ms. Detwiler earned undergraduate degrees from Northwestern University and a master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she is also a Doctor of Musical Arts degree candidate. She teaches voice and opera in the Fredonia School of Music and is the founder and conductor of its Women’s Choir. A 1999 Metropolitan Opera National Council regional winner, she also won the Italo Tajo Opera Award, the Corbett Award and Presser Music Award, and the 2001 Outstanding Faculty Award. Ms. Detwiler has performed with San Francisco Opera, Central City Opera, and Kentucky Opera; and was a soloist with the orchestras of San Antonio, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Vienna, Austria. She is also a frequent clinician and conductor for conferences and choral festivals.

Other works to be performed by the symphony are the Slavonic Dances Nos. 1, 3, 8 and 10 by Anton Dvorak.

The symphony is conducted by Dr. David Rudge. Dr. Rudge is director of Orchestra Activities and conductor of Opera at SUNY Fredonia, and also serves as music director of the Orchard Park Symphony Orchestra. He holds degrees from the Hartt School of Music, the University of Houston, and the University of South Carolina, and has also studied conducting at the Dartington School in England, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria; the Pierre Monteux School, the Aspen Musical Festival, and the National Conservatory of Romania. A violinist, Dr. Rudge has studied with Yumi Ninomiya, Jascha Brodsky, Renato Bonacini and Fredell Lack. In 1996, as an Artistic Ambassador for the U.S. Department of State, Dr. Rudge spent two months in Damascus, Syria, conducting the National Symphony and Chamber Orchestra. In 1998, Dr. Rudge was awarded a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship and as a Senior Fellow spent the summer months in Egypt conducting the Cairo Opera Orchestra, the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, and the Cairo Opera Chorus, and teaching at the National Conservatoire of Music.