WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. –The North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA) Symphony Orchestra will perform a concert with a distinctive Hungarian flavor on Saturday, April 19, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 for adults and $10 for seniors and students and are available through the NCSA Web site www.ncarts.edu or through the NCSA Box Office, (336) 721-1945. The concert will be held at the Stevens Center.

NCSA student Laura Manko, winner of the 2007 NCSA Concerto Competition, will perform Béla Bartók’s Viola Concerto. Ransom Wilson, artist teacher of conducting at NCSA and director of the NCSA Symphony Orchestra, will lead the orchestra in Bartók’s Roumanian Dances, Franz Liszt’s Les Preludes, Zoltán Kodály’s Hary Janos Suite and guest composer Randall Woolf’s Hee Haw. Bartók, Liszt and Kodály are all Hungarian composers.

Manko is a junior at NCSA and has performed as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player throughout the United States and Europe. She made her solo debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 2005. Manko subsequently has won many solo competitions including the North Carolina Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Young Artist’s competition, University of Tennessee Celebration of Excellence competition, Southern Adventist University Concerto competition, Maryville College Concerto competition and Blackwood Organ Foundation competition.

She currently is a member of the Stern Scholar Quartet, an honors string quartet at NCSA. She has been section violist with the Winston-Salem Symphony and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, as well as principal violist with the NCSA Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra, and Pennsylvania All-State Orchestra. She also has advanced to the final round of the Winston-Salem Symphony principal viola auditions.

Manko has performed in master classes for distinguished artists such as Kim Kashkashian, Carol Rodland, Don McInnes, Lawrence Dutton, Nokuthula Nygwenyama, Pamela Frank, and the Takacs and Miro quartets. She has participated in the Heifetz Music Institute, the Meadowmount School, the Encore School for Strings, the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, and the Eastern Music Festival.

As guest composer at NCSA, Woolf will be in residence during the week, helping to rehearse the orchestra prior to the performance. He will also teach a composition seminar to NCSA students on Friday, April 18.

Randall Woolf studied composition at Michigan State University and at Harvard, where he earned his doctorate. His composition teachers have included David Del Tredici and Joseph Maneri. Additionally, Woolf studied in Paris and at Tanglewood, where he won the coveted Paul Jacobs Commission. That commission led to the creation of his White Heat, a dynamic work that the American Composers Orchestra (ACO) performed at Carnegie Hall in 1998. Last season, the ACO performed Woolf's techno-country chamber orchestra work Hee Haw as part of its Orchestra Tech conference. Woolf is a member of the Common Sense Composers Collective, and in 1999-2000 was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.

Among his other recent projects, Woolf composed a new ballet, Where the Wild Things Are, a 1997 collaboration with Maurice Sendak and Septime Webre, that has been performed by the Washington, Colorado, Georgia and Louisville ballet companies. In March 2003, the string quartet Ethel will premiere his quartet Gorillas. Next season he will compose a work for flute and electronic soundtrack for Ransom Wilson’s solo recital at Lincoln Center, a string quartet with electronics for Ethel, and multi-media work for the Akron Art Museum and Symphony. Woolf is also composing new dance music for Heidi Latsky and for Lava. He works frequently with writer and director Valeria Vasilevski, having composed six works with her over the past three years. He has also collaborated on several film scores with John Cale, including American Psycho, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis.

In addition to his performances by ACO, Woolf's music has been performed by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New Millennium Ensemble, the EOS orchestra, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Seattle Symphony, Paul Dresher Ensemble, Bang On A Can/SPIT Orchestra, California EAR Unit, and others. He also has arranged music for John Cale (of the Velvet Underground), Kronos Quartet, Siouxsie Sioux, the Mediaeval Baebes, Atau Tanaka, and David Lang. CRI has recorded a CD of his works, entitled Rock Steady on its Emergency Music label. Also on Emergency Music are Dancétudes (Kathleen Supové), My Insect Bride (Common Sense Ensemble), Your Name Backwards (twisted tutu), and Where the Wild Things Are. Ransom Wilson and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two are planning to record a CD of his works for chamber orchestra in the coming year.

The North Carolina School of the Arts, located in Winston-Salem (“The City of the Arts”), was the first state-supported, residential school of its kind in the nation. Established by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, NCSA opened in Winston-Salem in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from middle school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. The North Carolina School of the Arts is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual and moving image arts. The chancellor, deans, and faculty work with students in a residential setting to create an educational community that is intimate, demanding, and performance-centered. Learning is enriched by access to an academic program responsive to a conservatory curriculum. Founded to be both an educational institution and a resource enhancing the cultural life of the state of North Carolina and the Southeast, NCSA offers numerous public performances, on- and off-campus, as well as community education in the arts.

School of the Arts alumni have performed in or behind the scenes of Broadway shows, film, television and regional theatre, and are members of the world’s finest symphony orchestras and opera and dance companies. They have won or been nominated for all of the major awards in the entertainment industry, including Tony, Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and others.