Afternoon masterclass to be presented September 10
FOR RELEASE: Tuesday, September 2, 2003
Huntington, Ind. " The Huntington College Music Department will host Ann Donner, formerly of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and Svetlana Sack, tsymbaly virtuoso, in an afternoon masterclass on Wednesday, September 10, 2003. Russian Folk Music & Instruments will be presented in the Longaker Recital Hall at 4:30 p.m. The public is cordially invited to attend. Admission is free. Accordionist Ann Donner grew up in Milwaukee, Wis., where playing the accordion was quite popular. She began accordion lessons when she was nine years old and added flute lessons at age 12. Continuing with accordion lessons for ten years, her advanced accordion studies were with composer/accordionist Donald Grzanna. Through him, she learned to love and play classical as well as folk and popular music on the accordion.
It was not possible for her to study accordion in college so her college music studies began at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a major in flute. She went on to get her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1968, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and studied at the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin, Germany. She has performed on the flute in solo and chamber music recitals, and from 1976-1996, she was second flute with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.
Ms. Donner returned to playing the accordion in the early 1990's and has played the accordion with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic in such pieces as Kurt Weill's Three Penny Opera, Paul Hindemith's Kammermusik No. 1, Op. 24, and Dominick Argento's Valentino Dances. She has also presented classical accordion recitals in local concert series.
Tsymbaly player, Svetlana Yurievna Antsulevich-Sack was born in Taganrog in the former Soviet Union in 1959. When she was seven, she and her mother moved to her mother's hometown of Grodno in the Soviet Republic of Belarus, near the Polish and Lithuanian borders.
Ms. Antsulevich-Sack graduated from a high school in Grodno which was a special school of music. She went on to graduate from the Grodno College of Music and was accepted into the prestigious National Academy of Music in Minsk, where she continued studies on the piano, guitar and the national folk instrument, the tsymbaly. She holds the equivalent of a Master's Degree in Music.
After graduation, Ms. Antsulevich-Sack returned to Grodno where she taught music until 1999, in both a city high school and at the Grodno College of Music. She also organized student folk ensembles for national and international competition and performed internationally in touring folk ensembles.
In 1999 she immigrated to the United States and married Jim Sack of Fort Wayne. She now teaches music privately in Fort Wayne.
