Photo courtesy of the musicians.

Molly Gebrian and Danny Holt to play the next Midday Concert @ 1:00 at Ellsworth Community Music Institute on December 12.

ELLSWORTH - Ellsworth Community Music Institute (ECMI) offers its next Midday Concert @ 1:00 on Friday, December 12 with Molly Gebrian, viola, and Danny Holt, piano.

The concert will be held at the Moore Community Center Theater, 125 State Street in Ellsworth, Maine. The series is sponsored by Ellsworth Community Music Institute (ECMI) with funding assistance from the City of Ellsworth and supported in part by a grant from the Onion Foundation. Admission is free to the public.

Longtime friends and musical collaborators Molly Gebrian (viola) and Danny Holt (piano) are known for their dynamic performances and their passion for shining a spotlight on lesser-known classical composers. Their recent album, Trailblazers, features Gebrian’s transcriptions of rarely heard cello sonatas by three female composers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The duo’s current program begins with the standout piece from that album: an intensely dramatic sonata by Dutch composer Henriëtte Bosmans. Contemporaneous works by Russian composer Sergei Vasilenko and British composer Elizabeth Maconchy round out the program, bringing a variety of rich romanticism, tender beauty, and rhythmic intensity.

Dr. Molly Gebrian is a professional violist and scholar with a background in cognitive neuroscience. Her area of expertise is applying the research on learning and memory to practicing and performing music. Her book, Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician’s Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing was published in 2024 by Oxford University Press. As a performer, she prioritizes the works of living composers and those who have traditionally been excluded from the culture of classical music. After a decade of teaching viola at the collegiate level, she joined the faculty at New England Conservatory of Music in Fall 2024 as the inaugural Teaching Artistry Scholar-in-Residence to teach about the science of practicing.

Called “phenomenal” by the late music critic Alan Rich, and “exceptional” by the Los Angeles Times, pianist Danny Holt performs around the globe in concert halls, clubs, art galleries, churches, living rooms, and wherever else he can find a piano and someone to listen. He has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Blue Man Group, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the California EAR Unit, and the Calder Quartet, among others. His recorded catalog includes the recent solo album “Piano Music of Mike Garson” and other solo, chamber, and orchestral releases. Holt holds degrees from California Institute of the Arts, Hampshire College, Smith College, and Interlochen Arts Academy. After nearly two decades in Southern California, Holt recently relocated to East Machias, Maine.

Future concerts in the series include; January 30th - The DaPonte String Quartet

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