The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art will host the Sunday Concert Series in conjunction with The University of Southern Mississippi Symphony Orchestra Sunday, Oct. 11 at 2 p.m. in the LRMA American Gallery.

The Fine Arts String Quartet of Mississippi will present “A Musical Melting Pot” which will include Dvorak’s "American" Quartet, Shostakovitch’s Quartet No. 8, and Paquito D'Rivera’s "Village Street Quartet." Members of the quartet are violinists Marta Szlubowska and Temperance Babcock-Steiskal, violist Alex Encinas, and cellist Taylis Fernandez.

Marta Szlubowska serves as Concertmaster of the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra and has appeared as soloist with the Mississippi Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Olympia Symphony, Bellevue Philharmonic, among others. Szlubowska has collaborated with such distinguished artists as Julius Baker (New York Philharmonic), Judith Glyde (Manhattan String Quartet), Alex Klein (Chicago Symphony), and Kevin Kenner (Winner, Chopin International Piano Competition). She was awarded second prize at the Bryan International String Competition in North Carolina and Honorable Mentions at international competitions in Poland, Belgium, and Finland.

Oklahoma native Temperance Babcock-Steiskal has played violin for 20 years, winning numerous competitions around the South and Southwest. She has performed at festivals throughout the United States including Sundance Festival in Park City, Utah and the ARIA International Summer Academy in Ontario, Canada. In 2003, she moved to Nashville where she studied and performed with Grand Ole Opry fiddle players Hoot Hester, Kenny Sears, and Carl Franklin. In addition to her classical career, Babcock-Steiskal also plays bluegrass and country fiddle. She has been featured on Mississippi Public Broadcast’s “Grassroots” radio program, the Mississippi Arts Commission “Mississippi Arts Hour” radio program, as well as Portico magazine.

Alex Encinas began his international career studying violin in Moscow where he worked with orchestras from around the world. However, it was to be the viola with which he would earn a master’s degree at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has participated in the International Tour, I Musici Estensi from Italy, and the International Tour, Arpeggioni Chamber Orchestra from Austria. He was Assistant to the Concertmaster at the Symphony Orchestra at the Cité Université in Paris. He taught violin at the Mercosur Festival Juvenil de Orquesta in Argentina and was Professor of violin and viola at the Universidad del Atlantico in Barranquilla, Colombia.

A native of Cuba, Taylis Fernandez began her studies in Havana. By the age of 15, she was a member of the well-known chamber ensemble Ars Longa, with which she toured in Mexico and Colombia. In 1998, Fernandez recorded the CD "Eco de las Indias." She was principal cellist for three years with the University of Southern Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, member of the Tulsa Symphony in Oklahoma, and Fort Smith Symphony in Arkansas. She is currently an active member of the Mobile Symphony Orchestra and the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. Fernandez is an honors graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi and an active chamber musician.

This Sunday Concert is sponsored by Tim Lawrence of Smith Barney, Inc. in Jackson and is free and open to the public.

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Seventh Street in historic downtown Laurel. For more information, call 601-649-6374 or visit the Museum’s website at www.LRMA.org.