Talented and entertaining area musicians performed to a full house at the Foothills Music Club’s Jan. 9 concert at Isothermal College.
Featured were three special guests – mystery guest, baritone Dean Trakas; and two Foothills Scholarship winners, vocalist Kate Riedy and saxophone player Katherine Barker.
Trakas, of Brady/Trakas Architects in Tryon, is an active community member and businessman as well as a gifted baritone.
Accompanied by pianist Jeanette Shackelford, he demonstrated his ease with various musical genres, from “Simple Gifts” (Aaron Copland), to Greek Orthodox liturgical music, sung in Greek, to Schubert’s An de Musik Op. 88, #4, sung in German. The audience had a rare opportunity to hear Trakas, whose busy schedule allows little time for public performances.
Foothills Music Club scholarship winner Kate Riedy sang a selection from a Puccini opera and a favorite from Fiddler on the Roof.
Riedy used her FMC scholarship to pay for voice lessons. She plans to study music theater and voice at Converse College beginning next fall. Alto saxophone player Katherine Barker played “Etude #4” (Rossari).
Barker has used her FMC scholarship to help repair her saxophone; she is headed to college next year and plans to be active in concert band.
FMC members completed the program with selections for flute and piano (Fran Creasy/Ursula Elliott); voice/piano (Jeanette Comer/Meryt Wilson); choral (Renaissance Singers Elaine Jenkins, Jeanette Comer, Jeanette Shackelford, Ellen Harvey Zipf, and John Gardner); and bassoon/piano (Karen Molnar/Karen Killough). Solo pianist Meryt Wilson concluded with pieces from her favorite period of music history, selections from Grieg and Debussy.
Foothills Music Club offers the community regular public concerts.  It also awards scholarships to young area musicians; information on the application process may be found at www.foothillsmusicclub.com.
Auditions for this year’s scholarship awards will be held in March.

– article submitted
by Susan Hartley