THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
Guest Artist Recital of Wesley Baldwin, Cello
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
7:30 p.m. | Longmire Recital Hall
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All…
Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.
Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.
Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
Bia Ke Borem Ba Mazar
Lamentations (Black/Folk Song Suite)
PROGRAM
Traditional Afghan arr. Dan Allcott
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson
Fuguing Tune (1932–2004)
Song Form
Calvary Ostinato
Perpetual Motion
Suite VI in D major, BWV 1012
Johann Sebastian Bach Prelude (1685–1750)
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Gavottes
Gigue
Julie-O
Mark Summer (b. 1958)
Cellist Wesley Baldwin performs throughout the United States and Europe as soloist and chamber musician. As a soloist he has appeared with the Laredo Philharmonic, the Oregon Mozart Players, the Symphony of the Mountains, and the Aberdeen, Bemidji, Bryan, Chattanooga, Florence, Johnson City, Hot Springs, Knoxville, La Porte, Oak Ridge, Manchester, New River Valley, Salisbury, Wintergreen, and Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestras, among others. His passionate and charismatic performances have garnered much critical acclaim.
An advocate for great music from all eras, Baldwin is one of the only performers of several little known and new concerti for cello, including recently those by Wagenseil, Jacob T.V., Behzad Ranjbaran, and Alan Shulman. His recording of music for cello by Alan Shulman, released by Albany records in 2010, enjoyed widespread critical acclaim. He has also recorded for the Naxos, Zyode, and Innova labels. His most recent CD release, his fourth on the Centaur label, features the chamber music of Arthur Honegger.
Baldwin was the founder of the Plymouth String Quartet, with whom he was a top prize-winner in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and a finalist in the Paolo Borciani International String Quartet Competition. He was also cellist of the James Piano Quartet for five years, with residencies at both Sweet Briar College and the Wintergreen Festival. Solo and chamber music performing honors Baldwin has received include the Prix Mercure, Homer Ulrich Awards, and a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Performing Artist Fellowship.
As a member and principal cellist of the New World Symphony, Baldwin performed with many of the world’s great conductors and toured Japan, Scotland, England, Argentina, and Brazil. His orchestral colleagues there selected him as the recipient of the New World Symphony’s Community Board Award for artistic integrity and leadership.
Baldwin has performed chamber music at the Aspen, Cazenovia, Hot Springs, Ojai, Sandpoint, Mainly Mozart, May in Miami, Skaneateles, and Sub-tropics Music Festivals, and internationally in Italy, France, Monte Carlo, Spain, Austria, Brazil, Argentina, the United Kingdom and Costa Rica.
In the summers he performs and teaches at the Michigan City Chamber Music Festival, the ARIA International Academy, the Cincinnati Young Artists Cello Workshop, and at the Wintergreen Festival, where he holds the Leonard Rose Memorial chair as principal cellist of the Wintergreen Festival Orchestra, and also serves on the faculty and as Associate Director of the Wintergreen Summer Music Academy.
A passionate teacher, Baldwin has taught at the University of Maryland and Florida International University, where he was artist-in-residence with the Plymouth Quartet. He currently serves as the youngest Professor of Cello at the University of Tennessee, where he received the Chancellor’s Award for Professional Promise. His former students play and teach throughout the United States.
Baldwin founded and directs the Tennessee Cello Workshop, an annual three-day gathering of more than 170 cellists of all ages from throughout the United States held each February. His interest in education has also led him to serve as Conductor of the Knoxville Youth Chamber Orchestra since 2006.
