Indiana University East will host David Gompper, piano, and Wolfgang David, violin, at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 8, in Vivian Auditorium. This event is sponsored by Mindful Explorations, courtesy of the William H. and Jean R. Reller Endowment.

The event is free and open to the public. An after-concert reception will be held in the Whitewater Hall Lobby, courtesy of the Musical Studies and Performance Group, a student organization at IU East.

Gompper and David will perform a composition by Elliott McKinley, assistant professor of music, entitled, “A Letter to Say I Love You and Goodbye,” during the concert.

A public lecture with Gompper and David will be held the same day at 4 p.m. in Vivian Auditorium, Whitewater Hall. The lecture is open and free to the public.

Gompper and David first performed at IU East in fall 2010. The duo has toured together since 2000 in the United States and abroad. The duo performs traditional works but they also focus on a combination of late romantic, standard 20th Century and contemporary compositions written especially for them.

Gompper has lived and worked professionally as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer in New York, San Diego, London, Nigeria, Michigan, Texas and Iowa. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London with Jeremy Dale Roberts, Humphrey Searle and Phyllis Sellick.

After teaching in Nigeria, he received his doctorate at the University of Michigan, taught at the University of Texas, Arlington, and since 1991, has been professor of composition and director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa. Gompper was in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar in 2002-2003 to teach, perform and conduct at the Moscow Conservatory. In 2009, he received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City.

Gompper’s compositions are heard throughout the United States and Europe. His “Transitus” (for wind ensemble) premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1999. A number of his works have premiered in London’s Wigmore Hall. He recently completed several new compositions including “The Animals” on the poetry of Marvin Bell written for Stephen Swanson. His “Violin Concerto” was recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (London) and was released this year.

David has been a recitalist and guest soloist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Berne Symphony Orchestra, and New York Virtuosi.

Admitted to the University for Music in Vienna at the age of eight, David studied there with Rainer Küchl, the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.  Later, he studied at the Musikhochschule in Cologne with Igor Ozim and with Yfrah Neaman at the Guildhall School of Music in London.

The winner of many competitions and prizes, David has performed in major halls such as Konzerthaus and Musikverein Hall in Vienna, Carnegie Hall in New York, Cerritos Center in Los Angeles, the Wigmore Hall in London, Victoria Hall in Geneva, and Philharmonie in Cologne. He released a CD with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in April 2011.

For more information, contact the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at (765) 973-8222.