NewsPress Release - 2/16/2000Marlboro Concert Features Cellist Bonnie Thron and Pianist RobertMerfeld

MARLBORO, VT -- Cellist Bonnie Thron (see photo) and pianist Robert Merfeld will perform several pieces by Couperin, Messiaen, Beethoven, Dvorak, and Schumann at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 5, in Marlboro College's Whittemore Theatre.

Thron, a member of the Thron-Mahonske Duo, recently returned to a life of full-time music after eight years of being both a cellist and a registered nurse with John Hopkins Health System. Previously, she was a member of the Peabody Trio, the assistant principal cellist of the Denver Symphony Orchestra, and a freelancer for the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, and Herrick Quartet. She has performed concertos with the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble, the Julliard Orchestra, and the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. She has been a guest artist with the Apple Hill Chamber Players and frequently returns to the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music in the summer to teach and perform with her husband, clarinetist Fred Jacobowitz. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees from the Julliard School of Music.

Merfeld is currently a piano and chamber music faculty member at Boston University and Harvard University, and the coordinator of the chamber music programs at Longy School of Music and BU's Tanglewood Institute. A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and the Julliard School, Merfeld was a founding member of the Apple Hill Chamber Players, with whom he toured nationally and internationally for more than twenty years. In addition to performing at the Marlboro Music Festival, he has made appearances with the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, the Brandeis University Orchestra, and the national orchestras of Costa Rica and Bolivia. He has recorded on the Sine Qua Non and Centaur labels, has appeared on National Public Television, and has been a frequent performer on WGBH-Boston and WQXR-New York radio stations.

The event is free and open to the public. Whittemore Theatre is fully accessible. For more information, please call (802)257-4333. The Marlboro events calendar can be found on-line at www.marlboro.edu/calendar/calendar.html.