Nov 19, 2022
7 pm
First Parish of Sudbury (in-person event)
Tickets: $20/person at the door
Free parking is available onsite and behind Sudbury Town Hall.
Join us for an evening of Classical Guitar: Old and New! Father and daughter guitarists Klondike and Mei Yin Steadman will perform a concert of classical music from the Baroque to the present day. Mei Yin will perform traditional favorites by the likes of Telemann, Scarlatti, and Rossini while Klondike will be premiering newly commissioned works by award-winning composers Ruth Myers Sacks and Trevor Weston.
About the musicians:
Mei Yin Steadman was born in Austin, TX, in 2005. Growing up in her parents’ music school, Orpheus Academy of Music, seeing kids taking music lessons every day, she expressed her desire to learn to play music as soon as she could talk. She started Musicianship classes at age four, guitar at age five with her dad, and piano at age six with her mom. She continues to play both instruments but now studies guitar with Professor Adam Holzman. She has excelled particularly at guitar, winning solo prizes at the Southern Guitar Competition, Texas Guitar Competition, the Asian American Competition, The Texas Guitar Conference, and the Houston Classical Guitar Festival and with the Orpheus Guitar Quartet at the Southern Guitar Competition and the Brownsville Guitar Ensemble Festival. She has performed on the radio for KUT’s Eklektikos with host John Aielli, on television for KXAN, and at Carnegie Hall for the 15th anniversary concert of Orpheus Academy of Music.
Dr. Klondike Steadman is a pioneering guitarist, entrepreneur, educator, and author. He has taught at the University of Texas Butler School of Music, served on the faculty of Southwestern University and the Classical Minds Guitar Festival. As the co-founder and director of Orpheus Academy of Music with his wife, Wendy Kuo, he has built one of the most successful music programs for kids in the country. He is the author of The Complete Guitar and The Complete Guitar For the Older Beginner, which is used by many private teachers and as the textbook for guitar classes at colleges and universities across the US. His presentation The Student Chamber Music Project, at the Music Teachers National Association, was very well received and has sparked a great deal of additional research and music which is now used in chamber music programs. His work using the Kodaly approach in private lessons has led to the creation of a method book “Adventures Through Sound,” publication in music teaching journals as well as presentations to music teacher organizations.
His groundbreaking 2019 book Loving Practice, Developing Discipline became a best seller on Amazon and has been hailed by Dr. Robert Duke as having “…insight and wisdom that can only come from a perceptive, focused mind with a tenacious devotion to the flourishing of children — in the arts and in life.”
Klondike believes that, with the right guidance, achieving musical excellence can be fun and rewarding for everyone. His achievements as a teacher and performer in the music field have made him a highly sought-after instructor in the Austin area. He has won top prizes in many performance competitions including the Music Teachers National Association Competition, The University of Texas Concerto Competition, and the Portland International Guitar Competition. He has appeared in concerts across the United States both in recital and as an orchestral soloist. Klondike’s students have been accepted to universities as music majors and have won prestigious scholarships and competitions including the Texas Guitar Competition, the Young Artists Concert, and the Asian American Challenge Cup. In 2001 Klondike founded the Educational Outreach Program for the Austin Classical Guitar Society to provide expert private guitar instruction to low-income high school students free of charge. This program continues to provide quality music instruction with guitar students regularly giving public concerts as soloists and in guitar ensembles. In 2003 Klondike received the prestigious Studio Fellowship Award from the Music Teacher’s National Association for his work opening the Orpheus Academy of Music.