The Weston Music Center's current season will be celebrated by three recitals that will take place at the Weston Public Library on Norfield Road in Weston. The first two will be on Saturday May 22 at 10:30 AM and at 1 PM, the third, for the more advanced students, on Sunday May 23 at 1 PM.

Faith Sherman, a former piano student of Genevieve Brings, and the holder of an artist diploma in opera studies from the Juilliard School, received a Grammy Award nomination for best opera recording for her work as a soloist on the Wolf Trap Opera Company's recording of John Musto's Volpone.

Since Allen Brings' Concert Piece for flute quartet was performed by Femmes Four at a concert presented by Connecticut Composers at the Wilton Library on October, 4 last year, several other works by Brings have been performed in various parts of the country. His Sonata a quattro for percussion quartet was performed by a student ensemble at Queens College on November 24 at a concert presented by the Long Island Composers Alliance, Peroration for solo horn by Janine Nagao on December 20 at Stony Brook University, Three Sonnets after the Portuguese for alto, violin and bassoon at a regional conference of the Society of Composers (SCI) at Puget Sound University in Tacoma, WA, on March 6, 2010, and his brass quintet by the faculty quintet at Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS, at another regional SCI conference on March 26. Composer-violinist Thomas L. Read and pianist David Feuzeig twice performed his Duologue 7 in Vermont in April, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Hong performed the second movement of his Serenade for Orchestra on April 20 as the first-prize winner among approximately 100 entries in the Pittsburgh Orchestra's Audience of the Future program in which high school students choose a program of works to be performed by the orchestra including at least one new work. A recording of the entire Serenade can be found on the fourth of Connecticut Composers' Spectra compact disc series. While he was in Tacoma, Brings also gave a two-hour presentation of his music at Pacific Lutheran University, performing two of his compositions for piano. On Sunday, May 2, faculty member, cellist Adam Grabois, and former faculty member, violinist Deborah Wong, gave a concert of works for violin and cello in Westport presented by the Connecticut Alliance for Music that included a performance of Gerald Levinson's setting of poems by Robert Lax featuring Allen Brings as the narrator of those poems. Faculty member, soprano Jennifer Foster, with Allen Brings at the piano will perform Brings' Five Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins at a concert at Christ & St. Stephen's Church off Lincoln Plaza in New York City on June 7 presented by the National Association of Composers/USA. Their recording of this work together with four other works by Brings was released by Capstone Records in 2008, a disc that opened with Brings' performance of Three Studies for piano, left-hand.

When Bethel High School gave out awards to students in grades 10-12 on May 27, one of our own outstanding piano students, Nate Appelson, was given the award from Columbia University for being an outstanding student in Engineering and Sciences. Those who attended the Music Center's year-end recital at the Weston Library on May 23 will remember his unforgettable performance of the Prelude and Fugue in G major from Bach's Well-tempered Clavier and the first two pieces of Robert Schumann's Fantasy Pieces, op. 12. All of us at the Music Center, but especially his teacher Allen Brings, send him our warmest congratulations.

Our congratulations to Rebecca Zhu and Katie Lee upon their graduation from Weston High School in June. Katie, who is salutatorian of her class, will be attending Barnard College, and Katie is off to Yale University.