Music on Market - Andrew Sords Trio

Music on Market is a program of The United Methodist Church of Wooster and supported by Main Street Wooster, Inc. and Wayne Center for the Arts. The series provides a diverse selection of high-quality music throughout the year to the entire community. These performances are presented in the Wooster UMC sanctuary - one of the largest, historical venues in our downtown and has handicap accessibility, available parking and proximity to downtown restaurants.

All events are free with a free-will offering to help cover the costs that accompany this amazing series. Seating is open style and no tickets are required. Doors open at 6:15.

The Sords/Matthews/DeMio Trio will thrill in a romantic program with ardent themes and virtuosity. Guest baritone Daniel Singer joins the group with Spohr's 6 Gesanges, and the fiery Mendelssohn trio closes the evening.

American violinist ANDREW SORDS has a celebrated career as a soloist on 4 continents and in performances with his trio. Having collaborated with 300 orchestras, Sords has been cited for combining visceral virtuosity with a ravishing tone, while international critics endorse Sords as “a fully formed artist” (Kalisz-Poland News), “utterly radiant” (Canada’s Arts Forum), and “exceptionally heartfelt and soulful” (St. Maarten’s Daily Herald). Closer to home, ClevelandClassical.com gushed: “the stunner of the afternoon was a breathless but magnificently controlled performance of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” sonata, which Sords charged through with giddy aplomb.” Sords has received numerous awards and distinctions reflecting his career trajectory, including the 2012 Pittsburgh Concert Society Career Grant and the 2005 National Shirley Valentin Award.

Born in Newark, Delaware, Sords was raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and asked for piano lessons at age five. A year later, he began studying violin with Liza Grossman, and continued studies with Linda Cerone, David Russell, and Chee-Yun Kim at the ENCORE School for Strings, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Southern Methodist University. As a teenager, Sords garnered prizes from concerto competitions, signed with management, and cultivated a media and audience following from hundreds of interviews, profiles, and appearances. Following Sords’ debut in Australia, the Melbourne Age declared, “Sords made a voluble soloist in Mozart's Turkish concerto, forging his statements with an admirably firm clarity and bringing out the work's virtuosity as often as possible. His bowing arm showed an attractive suppleness and an attention to variety of phrasing that made even the episodic finale a pleasure.”

In the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons, Andrew Sords will tour extensively with the Beethoven sonata and piano trio cycles, the Triple Concerto, and the Violin Concerto in celebration of the composer's 250th anniversary. These appearances will include far-flung venues such as Australia, Mexico, Quebec, the Caribbean, the Canary Islands, and across the United States. Sords returns to the Peninsula Symphony (Sords/Walz/Durkovic) and North State Symphony (Sords/Anderson/Anderson) with Beethoven; appears with the Mississippi Valley Orchestra (Tchaikovsky); visits the Juneau Symphony (Bruch); trots out Corigliano's "Red Violin Chaconne" and Paganini's "La Campanella" with the Longwood Symphony; and continues touring with baritone Daniel Singer and pianist Elizabeth DeMio featuring the obscure "6 Gesange" by Louis Spohr. Uniting with John Walz (cello) and Timothy Durkovic (piano), Sords will appear in several all-Beethoven programs throughout the Los Angeles area, including return appearances at Pasadena's Boston Court Concert Series and the St. Cross Music Guild. Following a tradition of annual tours in Canada, Sords will make his British Columbia debut with a tour visiting the North Okanagan Concert Association, the Kelowna Concert Association, and the Evergreen Concert Series (Vancouver), and in 2020, travels north to Whitehorse Concerts (Yukon Territory). Also in 2020, Sords makes debuts on the Barrie Concert Series (Ontario), Lakeshore Chamber Music (Montreal), and the Caledon Series (Toronto) - all with pianist Cheryl Duvall.

A man of diverse interests, Sords has competed in the charity fundraiser “Pittsburgh’s Dancing With The Stars” as the first classical artist to do so. Passionate about social causes, Sords has performed numerous times for LGBT outreach, including Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy”, the Tchaikovsky, and the Beethoven concerti in collaborations with the Minnesota Philharmonic, the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, and the Atlanta Philharmonic. Along with Liana Izakadze’s World Virtuosi, Sords appeared in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, and will perform the Sibelius and Dvorak concerti in 2019 appearances with the Jackson Symphony and Brevard Symphony. Sords is a popular guest for various media platforms: featured four times on Sirius XM’s Derek and Romaine Show and profiled by “OUT Magazine”, NPR’S Morning Edition, and hundreds of media outlets, Sords also performed the National Anthem for ESPN2’s WNBA Pride Game (2014) and a sold-out Cleveland Indians game at Progressive Field. Sords’s recent collaboration with Sean Christopher on the New-Age album “Transcendence” has been a commercial and critical success, with reviews stating: “much of this is owed to the gorgeous and precise playing by Andrew Sords, whose violin adds a thrumming undercurrent of pure life throughout the album’s stainless steel structure.” This album is available on iTunes, Amazon.com, and CDBaby.

Sords makes his home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and can be found on the web at http://www.andrewsords.com.

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