Newnan Times-Herald: Friends of Wadsworth Concert announces March 12 event [including Violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama]

Violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama
has a website at www.ngwenyama.com
and is featured at AfriClassical.com

The Newnan Times-Herald

Newnan, Georgia
By Maggie Bowers
Jan. 29, 2016

Tickets will be on sale beginning today for the annual 2016 Friends of Wadsworth Concert: The Legacy Continues, which will take place March 12 at the Charles Wadsworth Auditorium located at 25 Jefferson Street in downtown Newnan.

The evening of song and chamber music will feature rising stars of the classical music world, with Newnan’s own Courteney Budd returning to the Wadsworth as artistic director and host.

Musicians Nokuthula Ngwenyama on viola, Wendy Sutter on cello, Laura Ward on piano, and returning is a familiar face to Newnan audiences, Chee-Yun on violin will perform at 7:30 p.m. Budd, herself an accomplished soprano, will also be joined by internationally-known baritone Randall Scarlata.

Nokuthula Ngwenyama, also known as “Thula,” for short, is a resident of Phoenix, AZ, not far from her native California. Ngwenyama gained international attention after winning the Primrose International Viola Competition and the Young Con- cert Artists International Auditions at age 17. Plaudits followed her debut recitals in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center and in New York at the 92nd Street ‘Y,’ and in 1998 Ngwenyama received the presti- gious Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Featured as a “Face to Watch” in the Los Angeles Times, Ngwenyama’s perfor- mances as orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber musician garner great attention. Gramophone proclaimed her playing as providing “solidly shaped music of bold, mesmerizing character,” and the Washington Post described her as playing “with dazzling technique in the virtuoso fast movements and deep expressiveness in the slow movements.”

Recent highlights include an appearance with the Sinfonieta Cracovia performing Pendericki’s Viola Concerto and multiple domestic performances, including appearances at the Kimmel Center in Philadel- phia and on the People’s Concert Series in New York with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. She also completed a recording project of the three Bach Gamba Sonatas with keyboardist Eckart Sellheim. Ngwenyama has performed throughout the United States and across four continents.