The Daily Gamecock

Issue date: 10/21/08 Section: The Mix

Andrés Díaz joins the USC Symphony Orchestra tonight. The renowned musician has played venues such as Carnegie Hall. (Special to The Daily Gamecock)

The USC Symphony Orchestra will perform tonight at 7:30 in the Koger Center. Student tickets are available for $8. During the special performance, the second of this season, acclaimed cellist Andrés Díaz will join the symphony.

Díaz will perform Haydn's Cello Concerto in D major, a very exciting piece that contains high register and double stop passages. Episodes in the concerto contain fast notes and leaps in range to show off the talent and range of the cellist.

Díaz, born in Chile, began to study cello at the age of five. By the age of eight, Díaz had moved to Atlanta to study at the Georgia Academy of Music with Martha Gerchefski. Díaz won first prize in the 1986 Naumburg International Cello Competition and gained a reputation for intense and charismatic performances.

Díaz has performed with the Atlanta Symphony, with the American Symphony at Carnegie Hall and with the symphony orchestras of Milwaukee, Seattle, Rochester and Chicago. He has also performed at the Ravinia Festival with the National Symphony Orchestra.

Díaz is known for inserting personality and character into his musicto make it stand out from that of musicians who perform in a strict and superficial manner.

Díaz's summer festival appearances include the Tanglewood, Saratoga, Spoleto, Bravo! Colorado, Santa Fe and La Joya festivals. Díaz also tours nationally with many festivals. For his performances at Tanglewood, Díaz won the Pierre Mayer Memorial Award for Outstanding String Player.

Díaz is very active with the Díaz String Trio, featuring violinist Andres Cardenes and violinist Roberto Díaz. They made the debut of a string trio written for them by Guther Schuller at Carnegie Hall in 2003. Since then, the trio has performed all across the United States, Canada and South America. Recently appointed head of the string department at Southern Methodist University, Díaz now lives in Dallas with his wife and two sons.

The orchestra will also perform Weber's Der Freischütz Overture and Mendelssohn's beautiful Symphony No. 3 (Scottish). Donald Portnoy, conductor and director of the orchestra, said that tonight's pieces are "exciting and easy to listen to."

Weber's Der Freischütz Overture comes from his romantic opera. The music tells the story of a shooting contest, the winner of which will receive a desired bride's hand in marriage. The story also contains magic bullets and a twist of events. The overture for this opera made history for drawing most of its musical material from the opera itself. Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3 (Scottish) was inspired by the ruins of castle of Mary Queen of Scots and depicts a somber mood.

Portnoy urged students to come and support their fellow Gamecocks in the symphony.

"Just about all are music majors. Some are undergraduate and some are graduate students. They are all your fellow students," Portnoy said. "Not every university has a symphony orchestra, so we are really blessed to have a fine symphony orchestra … and it is very exciting to have a world-class cellist to come and play here."

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