Sabina Thatcher to perform at BYU Primrose Memorial Concert March 6

Sabina Thatcher, principal violist of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, will be the featured guest artist at the Brigham Young University School of Music’s annual William Primrose Memorial Concert Saturday, March 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Madsen Recital Hall.

Thatcher will be assisted by BYU faculty members Jeffrey Shumway on piano and Claudine Bigelow on viola. Admission is free.

The program will include Arthur Benjamin’s “Jamaican Rumba” arranged for viola and piano by William Primrose and a selection from Forty-Four Viola Duets by Bela Bartók, transcribed by Primrose. Thatcher will also be performing Max Reger’s Suite No. 2 and Johannes Brahms’s Sonata in F Minor for viola and piano, Op. 120, No. 1.

The Primrose Memorial Concert is an annual event that honors the legendary violist and former BYU faculty member William Primrose (1903-1982). This program features violists from around the globe, who, like Primrose, distinguish themselves on the instrument and promote its scholarship.

Thatcher, who has performed in festivals throughout the United States and abroad, began her tenure in 1989 as principal violist of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in St. Paul, Minn. She has been a soloist with the SPCO on many occasions, performing a wide variety of repertoire, including Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, John Harbison’s Viola Concerto and Lachrymae by Benjamin Britten.

Thatcher is a faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival and School, a Distinguished Artist of the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University and a member of the Rosalyra String Quartet, which made its New York City debut in 1996 and has released an album of Bartók and Beethoven quartets on the Boston Records label.

For more information, contact Claudine Bigelow at (801) 422-1315.

Photo by MW Skrepnick