NORWICH – The Chenango Council of the Arts in Norwich is presenting French cellist Florent Renard-Payen in a solo performance entitled Bach and Beyond at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Martin W. Kappel Theater.

The program will feature a selection of Préludes from the Suite for Solo Cello by J.S Bach, and recent pieces written by American composers. Renard-Payen says, “The idea behind Bach and Beyond came from my devotion to the performance of new music. By presenting these recent works on a program juxtaposed with the Préludes of the Bach Cello Solo Suites, I hoped to create a beautiful musical introduction or interlude to set the tone for each piece. The analogy of this musical journey was inspired by my observations on many occasions at the Glass Pyramid, and the historical Louvre Museum during my late night walks in Paris.”

Florent Renard-Payen was born in Paris to a family of professional musicians; his parents were both harpists. At the age of twenty, he moved to Boston to pursue five years of graduate study with artist cellist Andrés Díaz, culminating in a Master’s degree and the Pi Kappa Lambda award for musical achievement from Boston University in 1996. He completed his musical studies in 2004, earning a Doctor of Musical Arts in Cello Performance from the Eastman School of Music.