NATCHITOCHES – A guest artist recital featuring Shreveport-based musicians Johnum Palado on violin, Thomas Hundemer on horn and Robert Cruz on piano will be presented on Sunday, Oct. 15 at 3 p.m. in the Varnado Hall Ballroom. Admission is free and open to the public. They will perform works by Gyorgy Ligeti and Johannes Brahms.
Palado is a violinist, church musician, and upcoming media scoring composer. Winner of the 2022 Oberlin Senior Concerto Competition for violin, Palado has performed in solo recitals, chamber music series, and orchestras throughout Arkansas, Louisiana, New York, Ohio and Texas. He recently received his B.M. in Violin Performance studying with David Bowlin from Oberlin Conservatory, where he was featured in masterclass performances for Alexander Kerr, Ayano Ninomiya, Vivian Weilerstein and the Apple Hill String Quartet, among others. An avid chamber musician, Palado was one of the founding members of the Sacred Heart Concert Series at the local Catholic church in Oberlin, Ohio. Serving as its artistic director in 2021-2022, he programmed works that span all periods of classical music, featuring intimate piano trios by Ludwig van Beethoven to monolithic ensemble works like John Adams’s “Shaker Loops.” Palado plays with the Shreveport and Longview symphony orchestras as a section violinist. As a church musician, he played piano until he received secondary organ training in Oberlin with professor Christa Rakich. In August 2022, he was appointed as director of Sacred Music at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Shreveport.
Hundemer, principal horn of the Shreveport Symphony since 1983, and a native of Bogalusa, has performed with many orchestras in the U.S and Mexico, among them the Orquesta Sinfonica de Xalapa in Mexico, and the Quad Cities Symphony (Iowa-Illinois). He is principal horn with the orchestras of Longview, Marshall, Texarkana and South Arkansas, and third horn with the Cabrillo Music Festival Orchestra in Santa Cruz, California, and the Des Moines Metro Opera Orchestra. Hundemer is director of the Hurley Music Library and lecturer in horn at Centenary College as well at Bossier Parish Community College and was the 1997 recipient of the Shreveport Regional Arts Council’s Artist Fellowship in Music, as well as a 1999 and 2001 individual artist grants. Hundemer holds a Bachelor of Science degree in composition from the University of Southern Mississippi and a Master of Arts degree in horn performance from the University of Iowa. As a composer he has had numerous performances of works for chamber ensembles and choir, including his orchestral piece “On Highways and Byways,” commissioned for the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase and premiered by the Shreveport Symphony in 2004.
A versatile musician whose musical passions span everything from Gregorian chant to contemporary musical theatre, Cruz currently works as a freelance musician. Upcoming engagements include accompanying his wife, mezzo-soprano Liesl Cruz, in a vocal recital juxtaposing Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und –leben” with contemporary musical theatre songs about love and loss. As a conductor, Cruz has led a variety of ensembles in a wide range of repertoire, including the original version of Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” Mozart’s “Credo” Mass, and Duruflé’s “Requiem.” He has served as music director for productions of “Into the Woods,” “Nunsense,” “Songs for a New World,” “Shrek the Musical,” “The Birthday Feast” and “1776” as well as scenes from “Don Giovanni,” “Die Zauberflöte,” “Le Nozze de Figaro,” “Regina and Dido” and “Aeneas.” He has also assisted with productions of “Les Misérables,” “Patience” and “Little Women.” A church musician since the age of 15, Robert’s most recent position was at the Cathedral of St. John Berchmans in Shreveport, where he developed and oversaw a program encompassing an adult choir, a treble choir, and two scholae specializing in Gregorian chant in addition to grade-school and high-school ensembles.
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Guest artists, from left, Robert Cruz, Thomas Hundemer and Johnum Palado will present a concert at Northwestern State University on Sunday, Oct. 15 at 3 p.m. in the Varnado Hall Ballroom.
