Coffee concert at Oak Ridge church Jan. 28; free

The Oak Ridge Civic Music Association will have a coffee concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 28, at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, 212 N. Tulane Ave.

Margaret Moore, violinist, flutist and lecturer in the philosophy department at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville will present a lecture/recital program asking, "Since music is often said to be a universal language, is it truly a language? How do composers create different forms of expression in their music?"

Moore will discuss these questions, using live chamber music to illustrate her examples, according to a news release.

Along with philosophy, there will be works by Telemann, Schoenberg, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, and Vaughan Williams. The recital will also feature performers Ruth Bacon, violin, Noelle Harb, voice, and Marcelo Urias, piano.

This ORCMA sponsored coffee concert is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served at a reception following the concert.

Moore teaches courses in aesthetics and the philosophy of the arts. She is also a violinist with the Johnson City Symphony Orchestra, the Symphony of the Mountains, and the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra. She has performed as a flutist with numerous groups including the Marble City Opera, and the Manhattan Virtuosi Orchestra in New York. She received her musical training at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, the Purchase College Conservatory in New York, and the Aspen School of Music. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy at Temple University and spent two years in the United Kingdom as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leeds as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council project devoted to aesthetics and the sciences. In 2015 she was invited to give a lecture recital on music and moral development at a National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Seminar. Since that time, she has developed concerts that combine chamber music and philosophy, performing in Florida, California, and Michigan.

Bacon is a native of New Mexico, where she began her violin studies at the age of four. She went on to study Suzuki Pedagogy in undergrad and violin performance in graduate school, receiving her Master’s of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2010. She was a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow for two summers and has toured internationally with Star Wars in Concert. Bacon moved to Knoxville in 2011 to play as a full time member of the Knoxville Symphony, which she did for nine seasons. She has played with orchestras around the country, including the Atlanta, Charlotte, Louisville, and Richmond symphonies. She has soloed locally with the Knoxville Symphony, Scruffy City Orchestra, and Maryville College Orchestra. As an avid chamber musician, she is a founding member of Knoxville based Inner Voices String Quartet. She maintains a vibrant studio of private violin students and spends her summers as a guest clinician and as Principal Second violin of Charlottesville Opera in Virginia.

Harb is a soprano from Knoxville. She graduated from UT with a master's degree in music in 2016, and has since been teaching voice privately and at colleges in the area. She is married to Stefan and is proud mama to James - who will tell her when he is “all done” during his private concerts before bed. Her favorite hobbies are reading, gathering friends, and avoiding house chores. Musical interests range from Mozart, to cabaret, to Jason Robert Brown, to classic hymns. You can follow her on Instagram or Facebook @thestudionoelle for some lighthearted tips on running a private voice studio.

Urias, pianist and conductor is the artistic director of the Oak Ridge Philharmonic. He holds both Master and Doctoral degrees in choral conducting from Indiana University. He studied piano with Henriqueta Duarte and John Harrington and has won numerous piano competitions in Brazil, his native country. He has also given many solo recitals, chamber concerts and has performed as piano soloist with several orchestras. He and his wife, Margareth, also an accomplished pianist played several recitals in Shanghai and Qingdao, China.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Coffee concert at Oak Ridge church Jan. 28; free