The University of Central Missouri Department of Music will host brothers and UCM alumni, David and Eric Halen in an Alumni Celebration Concert 7 p.m. Friday, April 13, in Hart Recital Hall.

A reception will follow the concert in the social hall adjacent to the Hart Recital Hall.

The concert is free and open to the public, although ticketing is required to assure adequate seating. Tickets are available online at ucmo.edu/music/halen, or by calling the Department of Music at 660-543-4530.

Funding for the concert has been provided in part by a grant from the Missouri Arts Council, with sponsorship by the Department of Music, the Warrensburg Friends of Music and the UCM Alumni Foundation.

The sons of the late Walter Halen, professor emeritus of music, and Thalia Halen, David and Eric were raised in Warrensburg and earned music degrees at UCM before embarking on careers as concertmasters of two of the world’s most prestigious symphonies. David is concertmaster of the St. Louis Symphony, and Eric is co-concertmaster of the Houston Symphony. The concert will be the first joint performance by the Halen brothers in decades.

The same year David Halen received a master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, he won the Music Teachers national Association Competition and was granted a Fulbright Scholarship for study in Germany. After serving as the assistant concertmaster with the Houston Symphony, he joined the St. Louis Symphony in 1991 and was named concertmaster in 1995. He has soloed with the Houston, San Francisco and West German Radio (Cologne) symphonies.

In 2007 David was appointed Distinguished Visiting Artist at Yale University and at the new Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. In the fall of 2012, Halen joined the string faculty of the University of Michigan.

As cofounder and artistic director of the Innsbrook Institute, David coordinates a weeklong festival in June of exciting musical performances and an enclave for aspiring artists. In August, he is artistic director of the Missouri River Festival of the Arts in Boonville, Mo.

Eric Halen received a master’s degree from the University of Illinois. At age 23, he became artist and teacher of violin at Texas Christian University and later joined the faculty of Rice University. He joined the Houston Symphony in 1987, assuming the position of associate concertmaster and currently as co-concertmaster.

As a chamber musician, Eric has collaborated with many pre-eminent artists, including violinist Sergiu Luca, cellists Gary Hoffman and Lynn Harrell, and pianists Christoph Eschenbach and John Kimura Parker.