Published: November 01, 2009 11:47 pm      

Award-winning violinist at MSU

MOREHEAD — Morehead State University’s string residency will present award-winning violinist Sara Caswell, on Nov. 12 through 14.

Her visit is with the Virginia R. Harpham Tri-State Honors Orchestra Clinic.

Caswell spent her formative years under the tutelage of internationally-renowned violin teacher Josef Gingold. She began her violin studies at 5 and has become a “brilliant world-class violinist...one of the very best of the present generation of emerging young jazz stars,” according to David Baker, music professor at Indiana University and director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra.

She has performed with Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Charlie Byrd, John Clayton and many of today’s top jazz violinists. She also has soloed in Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops Orchestra and Jazz Allstars and performed in Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York.

She will begin her visit with a guest recital at 3 p.m. Nov. 12 in Duncan Recital Hall within Baird Music Hall. At 7 p.m., she will have a “fiddling and jazz violin workshop and jam session” at the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music.

Another jam session with Caswell and MSU music faculty is on tap for Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. at Duncan Recital Hall.

She will cap off her tour of MSU with a show featuring the Virginia R. Harpham Tri-State Middle and High School Honors Orchestra at 7 p.m. Nov. 14 at Duncan Recital Hall.

Caswell’s residency is funded in part by Southern Arts Federation in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and Kentucky Arts Council. Also sponsoring her visit is The Buckner and Sally S. Hinkle Endowment for Humanities; MSU’s Department of Music, Theatre and Dance; Morehead State Public Radio; and Kentucky Center for Traditional Music.