NATCHITOCHES – A Guest Artist Recital featuring Christopher Adkins, principal cello of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, will be held at Northwestern State University on Wednesday, Feb. 10 at 7:30 p.m. in Magale Recital Hall. The recital is open to NSU faculty, students and staff. The audience is limited to 72 with masks and social distancing required. The recital will be live streamed at capa.nsula.edu/livestream.
Adkins will be assisted by NSU Assistant Professor of Piano Dr. John Price. The program will feature works by Bach, Dvorak, Gluck, Hindemith, Humperdinck, Massenet, Ravel and Tchaikovsky.
Adkins received his musical training at the University of North Texas and Yale University. During his tenure at Yale, Adkins held the position of principal cellist with the New Haven Symphony. Upon receiving his Master of Music degree, he assumed the duties of assistant principal cellist with the Denver Symphony. After two seasons in the Rockies, Adkins’ longtime dream of a major symphony principal chair was realized with the offer of the post with the Milwaukee symphony. In 1987, he returned to his native Dallas, to occupy the principal chair once held by his former teacher, Lev Aronson.
In addition to his duties with the Dallas Symphony, Adkins serves on the faculty of Southern Methodist University. He remains an active recitalist and chamber musician, performing extensively across the region. A member of a large musical family, he has, with six of his brothers and sisters formed the Adkins String Ensemble, whose performances were praised by the Dallas Morning News as among the 10 best concerts of the year. As the longtime cellist of the contemporary music group Voices of Change, Adkins was nominated for a Grammy award for the recording “Voces Americanas.”
Price received his Doctorate in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Oklahoma and has previously been a faculty member at Utah State University and Oklahoma City University. Price has worked as a staff accompanist at the Heifetz International Music Institute and the University of Oklahoma Summer String Academy.
As a collaborative pianist, he has performed in masterclasses for artists such as Paul Katz, Joseph Alessi, Andrés Cárdenes and Marilyn Horne. He served three years as an opera rehearsal pianist for OU Opera where he performed the complete orchestral reductions of Gianni Schicchi, Suor Angelica, Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Pasquale, Hansel and Gretel, Rodelinda, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and L’enfant et les sortiléges. He has also worked as a rehearsal pianist for Tulsa Opera’s productions of The Little Prince, Don Giovanni and Carmen. Dr. Price has won prizes at the Utah State University Piano Festival, the Donna Turner Smith Piano Competition, and been an Artist-in-Residence at the Baltimore Piano Festival. He is a two-time winner of the Utah State University Concerto Competition and as a result performed concerti of Liszt and Tchaikovsky with the USU Symphony Orchestra.
