Grand Valley State University will present the annual Cello Fest next week with some colorful guest musicians.

Organized by Pablo Mahave-Veglia, cello instructor at GVSU, Cello Fest gives students and community members an opportunity to listen to influential cellists perform and discuss their music.

Guests coming to GVSU this year include Grand Rapids Symphony cellist Alicia Eppinga, Chicago Symphony cellist Brant Taylor and Charleston Symphony principal Louise Dubin. These guests will perform “Bachianas Brasileiras,” an eight-cello and soprano musical work by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, with members of the GVSU faculty.

Because many of the musicians performing in the concert are not from West Michigan, Mahave-Veglia has to prepare them for their parts through email.

“It only works if you know who you are working with,” Mahave-Veglia said. “To do this with people you don’t know would be an exercise in irresponsibility.”

Mahave-Veglia has acquired an extensive list of contacts in the cello world during his years of education and work in the field.

“It’s really a small community,” he said. “I keep in touch and see what people are doing, and once a year I ask people like Louise Dubin to come in and share their knowledge.”

Dubin will also be presenting a lecture and recital as a part of the festival. Dubin attended Columbia College while simultaneously studying the cello at Juilliard. Her musical education continued from there and included many esteemed teachers from colleges and universities such as Indiana University.

Now an instructor, Dubin teachers masters classes across the country. She has also recently taught at University of Auckland and Juilliard’s Pre-College Division.

The focus of Dubin’s lecture will be Auguste Franchomme, a Parisian cellist who frequently worked with the composer Chopin.

“My program includes music that I found in the Biblotheque Nationale de France last summer,” Dubin said. “Except for the Caprice and Etude, none of it has ever been recorded.”

This performance is one of several concerts that Dubin has arranged to support her upcoming dissertation publication.

“I will include some historical commentary between pieces, (such as) what events were occurring in the lives of Franchomme, Chopin, and their Parisian patrons when these works were published,” Dubin said.

Sources such as letters will be the basis of Dubin’s research.

“I met seven of his direct descendants last summer and this fall in France on a trip funded by two grants from Indiana University,” Dubin said. “I’m on a mission to get his compositions heard.”

There is only one other in-depth research project on Franchomme, and it is in Polish.

“I have also transcribed some of his unpublished manuscripts of cello quartets, which are also included in this program,” Dubin said.

Dubin’s research and music will be presented at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Sherman Van Solkema Recital Hall in the GVSU Performing Arts Center in Allendale. The performance of “Bachianas Brasileiras” will be Wednesday at noon.

Both events free and open to the public.

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