{"id":26148,"date":"2020-07-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.tarleton.edu\/news\/tarleton-professor-student-featured-in-international-piano-festival\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T09:30:40","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T14:30:40","slug":"tarleton-professor-student-featured-in-international-piano-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/tarleton-professor-student-featured-in-international-piano-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Tarleton Professor, Student Featured in International Piano Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"attachment\"><a href='https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2021\/11\/image-372.jpg'><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2021\/11\/image-372-300x225.jpg\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Holach\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width:100%;height:75%;max-width:1600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Holach<\/p>\n<p>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE<\/p>\n<p>Thursday, July 23, 2020<\/p>\n<p>STEPHENVILLE, Texas &mdash;<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Tarleton State University professor of piano Leslie Spotz and&nbsp;junior piano major Michael Holbach will participate in the VII Encontro Internacional de Pianistas, July 23-29 on Facebook and YouTube.<\/p>\n<p>The Encontro will feature more than 120 participants from four continents. It was originally scheduled to take place in Piracicaba, Brazil, with Holbach&rsquo;s participation and travel funded by a scholarship.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Spotz, co-founder of the Encontro with Brazilian pianist Dr. Jo&atilde;o Casarotti, realized that even though COVID-19 caused the travel ban to Brazil, Holbach could still participate as the decision was made to make the event totally online.<\/p>\n<p>Holbach, of Dublin, Texas, was accepted via video audition this spring and will perform Beethoven and Bach in online piano master classes and recitals that will be streamed on Facebook and YouTube.<\/p>\n<p>Spotz, well-known in the Tarleton community, is an internationally acclaimed pianist. She will perform an all-Beethoven recital at 6 p.m. Monday, July 27, that likewise will be broadcast via Facebook and YouTube.<\/p>\n<p>Each evening of the seven-day festival a recital will feature a renowned faculty artist of the Encontro.<\/p>\n<p>Interest in the festival has spread worldwide, with several thousand viewers expected.&nbsp;Lectures, online workshops and performances on all things piano related will be presented daily from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Central Time to what has become an extraordinary cultural and musical community.<\/p>\n<p>Links to the free events will be announced on Facebook.&nbsp;For more information contact Dr. Spotz at 254-968-9241.<\/p>\n<p>Tarleton, founding member of The Texas A&amp;M University System, provides a student-focused, value-driven education marked by academic innovation and a dedication to transform today&#8217;s scholars into tomorrow&#8217;s leaders. It offers degree programs to more than 13,000 students at Stephenville, Fort Worth, Waco, Midlothian, RELLIS Academic Alliance in Bryan, and online, emphasizing real-world learning experiences that address societal needs while maintaining its core values of tradition, integrity, civility, excellence, leadership and service.<\/p>\n<p>Contact: Phil Riddle<br \/>817-484-4415<br \/><a href=\"mailto:priddle@tarleton.edu\">priddle@tarleton.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tarleton State University professor of piano Leslie Spotz and&nbsp;junior piano major Michael Holbach will participate in the VII Encontro Internacional de Pianistas, July 23-29 on Facebook and YouTube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","wds_primary_category":423,"footnotes":""},"categories":[423],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics-research"],"acf":{"image":null},"author_meta":{"display_name":"keegan","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/author\/keegan-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2021\/11\/image-373-300x200.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/category\/academics-research\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Academics &amp; Research<\/a>"],"unlinked":["<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Academics &amp; Research<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":0,"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 6 years ago","modified":"Updated 7 months ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on July 23, 2020","modified":"Updated on October 7, 2025"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on July 23, 2020 12:00 am","modified":"Updated on October 7, 2025 9:30 am"},"featured_img_caption":"Woman with shoulder-length brown hair smiling.","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54063,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26148\/revisions\/54063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}