Grammy Award Winning Cellist
Featuring Music from the CD, “In Harmony”
The concert will take place in the Old Economy Village Feast Hall.
The concert will showcase Harmony Society music recorded by cellist Eugene Friesen in the wine cellar built by the Harmonists in 1809, located in Harmony, PA. “Friesen performed a concert in the Harmony Museum wine cellar several years ago,” says Harmony Museum board member Andrew Orient, “and was so inspired by the unique acoustics of space he returned to Harmony to record a compact disk of Harmonist music.
The Harmony Society became one of 19th century America’s most successful communal groups in various businesses, especially in production of woolens and linens. They founded the borough of Harmony in Butler County in 1804, and after ten years of progress, they relocated to Indiana Territory to found the town of New Harmony. The Harmony Society returned to Pa. in 1824 to establish their final home, Economy, (now Ambridge, Pa.) along the Ohio River. The society started practicing celibacy while in Harmony, and as members aged and died, the Society was dissolved in 1905.
Four-time Grammy Award-winner Eugene Friesen is active internationally as a cellist, composer, conductor and teacher. His unique original repertoire and improvisational style has been featured in concerts internationally with the Paul Winter Consort, and with Trio Globo (Howard Levy, Glen Velez and Friesen). Eugene has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” has recorded artists as diverse as Dream Theater, Will Ackerman, and Dar Williams, and is a pioneer in the teaching of improvisation to classically-trained musicians. His book, Improvisation for Classically Trained Musicians (Hal Leonard/Berklee Press) was published in 2012. He is an artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and Professor of Music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston where he founded and directs the genre-busting string orchestra, Berklee World Strings. More information on Eugene can be found online at: www.eugenefriesenmusic.com