Indiana graduates will perform at The Fox

Indiana University has more to brag about than winning basketball teams and being the research home for the Kinsey Reports.

Music, for instance. The university prides itself on having the largest music school in the country.

With 1,600 students and more than 160 faculty, the Jacobs School of Music has furnished concert halls and opera stages with distinguished stars such as Joshua Bell and Sylvia McNair.

But even more important to music communities here and abroad, IU has given orchestras, chamber groups and schools around the world a huge pool of highly talented and excellently trained musicians and teachers.

Five IU graduates will perform an “Indiana Reunion” concert Sunday at the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, sponsored by the Spokane Chamber Music Association, the parent organization of the Spokane String Quartet.

Jeffrey Shumway, professor of piano at Brigham Young University, will join violinist Misha Rosenker, violist Jeannette Wee-Yang, cellist John Marshall and string bassist Patrick McNally in a program of works by Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt.

The “reunion” idea is a bit deceptive Shumway concedes. In a telephone interview from his home in Provo, Utah, he admitted, “I have never performed with these players before. They’re young hotshots, and I got my doctorate at Indiana before they showed up there.”

Shumway received his doctorate in 1980. Marshall received his master’s degree in 1990, Rosenker his in 1991, and Wee-Yang her master’s in 1994. McNally is completing a doctorate at IU.

Rosenker and Wee-Yang are members of the Spokane String Quartet, and Marshall is a former quartet member. All, including McNally, are members of the Spokane Symphony.

Bringing the five Indiana graduates together in concert was the brainchild of symphony cellist Janet Napoles, and was the result of Shumway having been a judge in the MusicFest Northwest competition for young artists.

“I have adjudicated in the festival four or five times, and once Janet saw my name in the program and said, ‘Are you the Jeff Shumway I knew in Boise?’ ” he explains.

“We were teenage friends there when we were growing up. So we reminisced, and she introduced me to some of her friends from the symphony and the quartet, and that’s how this concert came about.”

Shumway will open Sunday’s program with Liszt’s “Dante” Sonata.

“It’s one of Liszt’s most powerful and beautifully constructed pieces,” he says. “Audiences get caught up in the contrasts between Liszt’s violent storminess and his almost celestial lyricism, and how brilliantly he manages to bring these sections together.”

Rosenker and Shumway will perform Beethoven’s Sonata in G major, Op. 30, No. 3.

“Beethoven’s violin sonatas are so fresh and tuneful,” Shumway says. “This one is a real delight, just as fresh and springlike as Beethoven’s earlier ‘Spring’ Sonata.”

All five performers will join in Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet for violin, viola, cello and string bass. The composer wrote the piece for this unusual combination because he was staying with a family whose members happened to play these instruments.

Sunday’s concert will be the first time the Chamber Music Association, which usually stages events at the smaller Bing Crosby Theater, presents a performance at the Fox.

Subscribers to the Spokane String Quartet series can bring a friend to the concert free of charge, says Garry Matlow, the association’s executive director.

“We know there are lots of Indiana alums in the Northwest,” Matlow adds, “so we’ll be happy to admit any Indiana University graduate at half price.”