Enjoy the first installment of the 2025 Sunday Recital series with a performance by Lynda Dembowski, clarinet; Maria Lorcas, violin; and Lise Keiter, piano.

The Music Department at Mary Baldwin University is delighted to announce the first Sunday Recital of 2025, featuring Lynda Dembowski, clarinet; Maria Lorcas, violin; and Lise Keiter, piano. The recital is Sunday, February 2 at 3 pm in Francis Auditorium on the Mary Baldwin campus.
The program includes both trio and duo works. The artists will perform French composer Darius Milhaud’s sparkling Suite for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano, along with Histoire du Tango, by Argentine composer Ástor Piazzolla, and the compelling Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano by Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian. They will also feature works by Florence B. Price and Grammy-winning composer Jessie Montgomery, in honor of Black History Month.
Clarinetist Lynda Dembowski is a long-time member of the U.S. Naval Academy Band. She has also performed with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, American Sinfonietta Orchestra, Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra, and Londontowne Symphony Orchestra. She became a charter member of the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival Orchestra in 1993 and has been a featured soloist. A native of Waynesboro, Virginia, she holds degrees from James Madison University, Duquesne University, and the University of Maryland.
Violinist Maria Lorcas began her musical studies in the famous youth orchestra program “El Sistema” in her native country, Venezuela. She later received a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from Duquesne and Carnegie Mellon Universities, respectively. She served as concertmaster of the Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho Symphony and first violinist of the Simon Bolivar Symphony in Venezuela. In the U.S., she has performed with the Wheeling, Westmoreland, and Altoona Symphonies in Pennsylvania, and locally with the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival Orchestra. She is on the music faculty at Eastern Mennonite University, as well as Eastern Mennonite Middle and High School.
Pianist Lise Keiter has performed throughout the U.S. and in Europe, and she is active as a solo recitalist, collaborative artist, and soloist with orchestra. Her recent performance engagements have taken her to New York City, North Carolina, Maryland, Wisconsin, Idaho, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia, South Carolina, and throughout Virginia, including recent performances with the Waynesboro Symphony, the Heifetz Institute, and the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival. She is on the faculty at Mary Baldwin University and holds degrees from Indiana University and the Oberlin Conservatory.
Tickets for the Feb. 2 Sunday Recital are still available — audience-goers are encouraged to purchase tickets online as soon as possible. Tickets are $5 for the General Public and $4 for Seniors and non-Mary Baldwin students. (MBU students, faculty, and staff may attend this concert free of charge.) Season tickets are also available. For more information about concerts at MBU, or to purchase tickets online, please click here. Questions may be emailed to Music@marybaldwin.edu.
