FARMINGTON – Two local students, now attending Oberlin College, will return to perform for the hometown audience at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 17, in Nordica Auditorium at the University of Maine at Farmington. Sam Sytsma and Melsen Carlsen will perform and will be joined by John Corrie of Bates College in Lewiston and Sytsma’s mother, Kathryn Sytsma.

The program will include a song cycle by Robert Schumann, Liederkreis, Op. 39, featuring Sytsma’s tenor voice and Carlsen’s piano playing. Schumann set the romantic lyrics of Josef von Eichendorff into these songs. These pieces were written for voice and piano as equal partners.

Also on the program is a cantata by French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau titled L’Impatience. Sytsma will be joined in this piece by John Corrie on harpsichord and Kathryn Sytsma on viola da gamba.

The concert is sponsored by the Arts Institute of Western Maine, an affiliate of the University of Maine at Farmington. Admission at the door is $6 adults, $5 seniors, children under 16, free.

Sytsma, 23, grew up in Farmington. At home, church, school and in the community, he was immersed in musical activities ranging from playing folk music on accordion, to playing two movements of piano concertos with the local community orchestra, to singing lead roles in musicals and singing in several vocal ensembles. His primary teachers were Yuri Funahshi for piano and Alan Shumway for voice.

Last month he graduated from Oberlin College with a bachelor of arts in environmental studies and a bachelor of music in voice performance.

Melsen Carlsen has just completed his fourth year at Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, where he is a double-degree student majoring in piano performance and studio art, with a minor in mathematics. His piano teachers have included Martha Lively, Cheryl Tschanz, Laura Kargul and Monique Duphil.

Carlsen has exhibited his photography in three different venues this semester, one of them being a six-state juried photography show in which he won a juror’s prize. This is his third consecutive summer returning from Oberlin to perform in Nordica.

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