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Courtesy Mika S. Akikuni,

(Laredo, Texas)-Internationally recognized pianist Molly Morkoski, who has performed both as a soloist and collaborative artist throughout the United States, the Caribbean and Japan will be the featured performer at the upcoming Master Performers @TAMIU Series Friday, April 1.
The concert will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Texas A&M International University Center for the Fine and Performing Arts Recital Hall. Admission is $5 minimum scholarship donation per person. TAMIU students enter free with an ID. Admission is free for children 12 and under. The event is sponsored by the Fernando A. Salinas Charitable Trust, TAMIU Housing and Residence Life, Hector Hall and Annabelle Hall.
The evening’s program includes interpretations of works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Edvard Grieg, Charles Ives and Frédéric Chopin.
Morkoski is currently associate professor of piano at the City University of New York-Lehman College in the Bronx.
The recipient of many awards, she holds music degrees from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Indiana University Bloomington, and State University of New York (SUNY) Stony Brook. She has given master classes at numerous universities and has served as a chamber music coach for programs at Julliard Pre-College, New York Youth Symphony, SUNY Stony Brook, and Columbia University.
Morkoski and her playing have been recognized by The New York Times as “strong, profiled, nuanced…beautifully etched…an energetic and focused player…with flexibility and warmth…” The Boston Globe called her “outstanding.” In 2007, she made her solo debut in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage Playing Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Op. 126.
As a soloist, she enjoys championing the classics, such as Bach’s Goldberg Variations and contemporary masterworks such as Ives’ Concord Sonata and Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus, as well as premiering new works of current composer colleagues such as john Harbison, Steve Mackey, and Gabriela Lena Frank.
Her debut solo CD, Threads, was released on Albany Records, to critical acclaim, and she has enjoyed numerous other recording collaborations, most recently Compadrazgo, a disc dedicated to the piano music of Gabriela Lena Frank. Morkoski was a Fulbright Scholar to Paris, where she was an apprentice with the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
As an avid chamber musician, Morkoski has collaborated with some of today’s leading musicians, including Dawn Upshaw, John Adams, John Corigliano, and David Robertson.
The Master Performer Series @TAMIU is offered by the TAMIU College of Arts and Sciences Department of Fine and Performing Arts.
For more information, contact Brendan Townsend, TAMIU assistant professor of music and interim co-chair of the Laredo Phil at 326.3039, e-mail btownsend@tamiu.edu or visit offices located in the Center for the Fine and Performing Arts, room 216C.