DUC Chamber Music Series: John McGrosso, violin and Todd Decker, harpsichord

Program

 

Violin Sonatas of J.S. Bach and G. F. Handel

 

Handel, Sonata for Violin and Continuo in G minor, HWV 364a
Bach, Sonata for Violin and Obbligato Harpsichord in F minor, BWV 1081
Handel, Sonata for Violin and Continuo in A major, HWV 361
Bach, Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin in G minor, BWV 1001
Handel, Sonata for Violin and Continuo in D major, HWV 371

 

 

JOHN McGROSSO, violin

Hailed by the Boston Globe as “first class, with a robust sound and technique that seems to come from the center of the person” John McGrosso has been the first violinist of the Arianna String Quartet since 1998. He has been featured as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and has performed in recital to critical acclaim throughout the United States. During seven years as a member of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s first violin section, Mr. McGrosso performed frequently in the orchestra’s “Chamber Music St. Louis,” and “Discovery,” series, and originated the popular “On the Stage” series of unique audience engagement evenings. He has taught on the faculties of Illinois Wesleyan University, the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Eastern Michigan University, and is currently an Associate Professor of Violin at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where the Arianna Quartet is tenured and has been in residence since 2000. As a member of the Arianna Quartet,he has collaborated with artists such as James Campbell, Gilbert Kalish, Bernard Greenhouse, Richard Stoltzman, and members of the Tokyo, Vermeer, and Juilliard Quartets, and been on the summer faculties of the Britt Institute, Madeline Island, and Music at Port Milford. Mr. McGrosso received his bachelors and masters degrees from Juilliard, and holds a Performer’s Certificate from Northern Illinois University. He also attended the Aspen Music Festival, the Steans Young Artist Program at Ravinia, and the Quartet Programme in Aldeburgh, England. His violin teachers have included Dorothy Delay, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Joyce Robbins, Joel Smirnoff, and Gerald Beal, and he has studied chamber music with members of the Juilliard, Tokyo, LaSalle, and Vermeer Quartets.

 

TODD DECKER, keyboards

Todd Decker is Associate Professor and Chair of the Music Department at Washington University. He earned a Master of Music in Harpsichord from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1991 and performed widely on the instrument in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1990s. Decker studied harpsichord with Edward Parmentier at the University of Michigan while earning a Ph.D. in musicology. He has published several articles on the eighteenth-century keyboard composer Domenico Scarlatti, in addition to three books on American popular and film music, including Who Should Sing Ol' Man River?: The Lives of an American Song (Oxford University Press, 2014).