STATE COLLEGE -- The Pennsyl-vania Chamber Orchestra presents the concert "The French Connection" at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 22 at The State Theatre, 130 W. College Ave.
The program is part of the orchestra's season "Changing Dynamics," under music director Yaniv Attar.
The audience will enjoy an eclectic mix of music with a French "twist," featuring internationally acclaimed cello soloist Kim Cook.
Fanfare Magazine praised Cook's "glorious sound" and critics from Gramophone described her playing as "eloquent" after the release of her recording of the Shostakovich Concerto and the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations with the Volgograd Symphony.
Cook has performed to critical acclaim as a soloist in 28 countries and has toured as Artistic Ambassador for the U.S. State Department. At her Carnegie Hall debut, critics admired her "ravishing colors and textures" (New York Concert Review). In Europe, she was hailed as "the superb American cellist" (Die Rheinpfalz, Frankfurt).
Her recordings include the concertos by Dvorak, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Saint-Saens, and Lalo, as well as the solo sonatas by Kodaly, Crumb, and Hindemith. In 2008-09, Cook was named the Inaugural Penn State Laureate.
Recent performances include recitals in New York, Baltimore, and the University of Cambridge, and concerto performances with the Splitski Virtuozi in Croatia, the Volgograd Symphony in Russia, and the Ukrainian State Orchestra in Kiev.
A graduate of Yale and the University of Illinois, Cook was principal cellist of the Sao Paulo Symphony and taught at New Mexico State prior to her position as Distinguished Professor of Cello at Penn State, where she has served for 25 years. At Penn State, her cello studio has attracted talented cellists from Europe, Asia, South America and the United States, and her former students currently occupy positions in orchestras and music schools in the United States, Sweden, Germany, Brazil, Croatia, and Taiwan.
She lives in State College with her husband Peter Heaney, professor of geosciences.
The concert will feature Couperin's Five Pieces for Cello and Orchestra, Ravel's "Le Tombeau de Couperin," Saint-Saens's Cello Concerto No. 1 and Mozart's Symphony No. 31, "Paris."
For ticket information, visit www.centreorchestra.org.