December 2026 Program
December 11: Members' Meeting - The History of Christmas Carols & Songs
Join us for a festive Members’ Meeting as we explore the fascinating history behind some of our best-known Christmas carols and songs! Members of our own Forum will share performances, stories, and historical insights, bringing familiar holiday favorites to life in new and meaningful ways. Come celebrate the season with music, fellowship, and the rich traditions behind the songs we know and love.
Man in glasses wearing a white shirt smiling.
December Program
Joel Schoenhals: Reflections on Preparing and Performing the Beethoven Cycle
Topic Description
This presentation demonstrates the extraordinary development of musical language that occurs from the first to last sonata of Beethoven. Shared from a performers’ perspective using excerpts, the lecture aims to bring to light the enormous harmonic, textural, formal, and emotional variety found in these works.
Speaker Biography
Joel Schoenhals is Professor of Piano at Eastern Michigan University and Foreign Expert at Central China Normal University in Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Between 2012 and 2016, Schoenhals performed the cycle of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, reaching thousands of Michiganders through over 70 community engagement concerts in salon atmospheres as well as in historic Pease Auditorium at Eastern Michigan University.
In 2016 he launched the Bach-Brahms Project, a two-year, four-concert series featuring the complete Partitas of Johann Sebastian Bach and character pieces of Johannes Brahms.
Schoenhals has also received praise for his recordings Bartók’s For Children, Lieder of Schubert Transcribed for Piano by Franz Liszt, and Musical Moments of Schubert and Rachmaninoff on Fleur de Son Classics.
Schoenhals holds a Master of Music, Doctoral of Musical Arts, and Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. He earned his undergraduate degree in piano performance at Vanderbilt University. From 1998-2010, he was a faculty member of the Summer Piano Program at the Chautauqua Music Festival in Chautauqua, New York.
Man in glasses wearing a white shirt smiling.