LEGENDARY AMERICAN ACCOMPANIST TO PERFORM AT DANA COLLEGE

Concert will be first in series on
Dana's newly acquired 9-foot concert grand piano

The Dana College Department of Music is proud to present the legendary American accompanist, John Wustman, on Sept. 10 at 3 p.m. in Trinity Chapel, Margre Henningson Durham Center on the college’s campus in Blair, Neb. Wustman will be joined in this performance by Dr. Lucinda Sloan, mezzo soprano, and Dr. William Shomos, baritone.

Wustman, who has been called the “dean of American accompanists,” has collaborated with many of the great singers of the second half of the 20th century in the leading concert halls of five continents; He has performed with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Birgit Nilsson, Regine Crespin, Christa Ludwig, Nicolai Gedda, Carlo Bergonzi and Luciano Pavarotti. Along with Maria Callas, Wustman served as a member of the jury at the Fourth International Tschaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Russia. His students are engaged as singers, conductors and repetiteurs at the Metropolitan Opera Company, Houston Grand, San Francisco Opera, Chicago Lyric, Munich Staatsoper and La Scala, to name but a few.

Sloan and Shomos are both former students of Wustman. Sloan is professor of music and chairman of the music department at Midland Lutheran College in Fremont, Neb., and Shomos is director of opera and associate professor of music at the School of Music, University of Nebraska--Lincoln.

This performance is the first in a series of events to dedicate the newly acquired concert grand piano, donated last spring by Dana alumnus Don Poh of Green Bay, Wis. The piano is a restored, 1973 9-foot concert grand Baldwin piano, one of the finest instruments available to college students in the region.

Dana College is a private, liberal arts institution that currently enrolls approximately 600 students. The campus is located on 150 acres overlooking the Missouri River Valley in Blair, Neb. Dana grants bachelor’s degrees in more than 35 liberal arts, business, education and pre-professional programs, with an emphasis on personalized teaching from experienced and dedicated faculty. Dana is a college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and its athletic teams compete in the Great Plains Athletic Conference.

More information on Dana College can be found at www.dana.edu.

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For more information contact: Sarah Cavanah, (402) 426-7216, scavanah@fs1.dana.edu