The first event of our Seasonal Concert Series will be held on Saturday, January 23 at 7:00 PM at Calvary Baptist Church. Sponsored by the Worship Team, the concerts are free and open to the public. A goodwill offering will be received during the concert. This first concert will feature a violinist and a guitarist playing the music of Argentina and Spain along with a more traditional repertoire.
Violinist Mandy Wolman met guitarist Brendan Evans at the Oberlin Conservatory in 2004, where they were both pursuing undergraduate degrees in performance. Drawn to each other's styles of playing and approaches to performing, they have over the years played together with increasing regularity, in venues from San Francisco to Massachusetts, playing primarily the music of Argentina and Spain, while also exploring the more traditional guitar and violin repertoire.
They currently live in Philadelphia, both are on the faculty of the Settlement Music School, and they perform regularly.
Since moving to Philadelphia in the fall of 2008, violinist Mandy Wolman finds herself living a diverse and active musical life. As a soloist she has given two world premieres in the past year, both at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY, played many performances with guitarist Brendan Evans, and has been a regular performer as part of the Philadelphia chapter of the Classical Revolution. She has given chamber music recitals in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania on modern and baroque instruments, and plays regularly with the early music group Vox Amadeus. As an orchestra member she has played with the Handel Choir of Baltimore, the Bach chorale society of Philadelphia, and Orchestra 2001, and has dates lined up through the rest of the concert season. She received her Bachelor's of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory in 2006, studying there with Marilyn McDonald. Before that she studied for seven years with Yayoi Numazawa, the first violinist of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Brendan Evans has been performing for the public since the age of 11, when he would busk on the streets of his hometown of Rockport, Massachusetts. Upon arriving at Oberlin College in 2001, he quickly realized that he wanted to be studying music, and transferred to the Conservatory, receiving his undergraduate degree in 2006, studying with Steve Aron. He spent a formative junior year in the south of Spain, where he studied flamenco guitar, and one day plans to return. He then moved to San Francisco and received his Master's Degree in Classical Guitar from the San Francisco Conservatory,
where he started to win prizes in competitions, most notably at the 2007 SFCM concerto competition, and the Portland International Guitar Competition. Since then he has taken prizes at the Appalachian State and Montreal competitions, and looks forward to the upcoming season of festivals. His current solo project is tracing the evolution of flamenco forms from guitarists Sabicas and Paco de Lucia to composers such as Joaquin Rodrigo and Regino Sainz de la Maza.
