5 Wilton Students to Perform in Piano Benefit Concert

Peyton Lauricella, a senior at Sacred Heart in Greenwich, her brother Jack Lauricella, an eighth grader at Fairfield Country Day School in Fairfield, Claudia and Jack Nanez, seniors at Wilton High School and Brianna Hekle, a sixth grader at Middlebrook School will perform in the 13th annual "Playing By Heart" concert by students of Wilton pianist Kyong Hee Cho. This year's recital will benefit Kids Empowered by You, KEYS, an organization dedicated to bringing one-to-one instrument lessons and group music instruction to underserved inner-city children in Bridgeport, CT. The concert will be held at Greens Farms Congregational Church in Westport, Sunday, September 22nd at 3:00 PM.

Although Mrs. Cho's students perform in recitals throughout the school year, this concert requires hours of extra practice and preparation, especially during the summer months, a sacrifice these busy students seem willing to make. For the three seniors, this is the fifth and final time they will perform in the concert. Peyton Lauricella speaks of this year's preparation as "a bittersweet experience. By this time next year, I will be in college, so I am working very hard to make sure this will be my best performance yet." Jack Lauricella, who will perform for the first time, is "looking forward to the experience of playing for such a worthy cause." Brianna Hekle admits that the preparation is "a lot of hard work and a little nerve-wracking" but confesses, "I've been wanting to play in this concert ever since I first knew about it, so you can probably guess how I felt when Mrs. Cho asked me to play in it."

Continuing in the spirit of the original concert, which was a response to the 2003 famine in Ethiopia and raised substantial funds to support infant and children feeding stations in the Yetebon region of that country, the performance is an effort by Mrs. Cho's students to "pay it forward." Over the years, the concerts have underwritten a variety of local and international causes including a Connecticut camp for children with cancer, a homeless shelter for men in Bridgeport and mosquito netting for children in the Amazon and a refugee resettlement agency in New Haven.

This year's program will include piano selections by Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and George Gershwin and feature a performance by the Triple Trio, an all female a-Capella group from the Hopkins School in New Haven. Tickets are $15 and are available from the individuals performers and at the door. The church is located at 71 Hillandale Road in Westport.