MusicologyLectureNov2008

Symphony Band to Perform Friday, November 21 at Hill Auditorium

Betsy Goolian

November 2008

A downhill ski run, a haunting poem, the beauty of folk singing, and the power of operatic drama all come together to create a stunning bill of fare featuring the University Symphony Band under the baton of Michael Haithcock, Director of University Bands. The downhill ski run is Slalom by U-M composition grad Carter Pann (MM ’96, DMA ’04). Says Pann of the work, “Slalom is a taste of the thrill of downhill skiing. The work is performed at break-neck speed throughout to showcase the ensemble’s volatility and endurance.” Pann got his inspiration for this work while skiing down the Rockies, under headphones, listening to his favorite classical repertoire. Also on the program is Cantina by David Rakowski, a widely performed young composer whose influences range from the Viennese School to Stravinsky to jazz, funk, and rock. Percy Grainger’s ever-popular Lincolnshire Posy is based on folksongs Grainger collected in Lincolnshire, England in the early 1900s. He dedicated the work to “the old folksingers who sang sweetly to me and each movement is intended to be a kind of musical portrait of these singers.” Also on the program are works by Joseph Schwanter and Richard Wagner.

The concert is at 8PM at Hill Auditorium and is free.

Musicology Lecture on The Musical Language of Desire

Betsy Goolian

November 2008

Join us on Friday, November 21, at 5:00 p.m. at Burton Tower for a fascinating lecture by Giuseppe Gerbino, Associate Professor of Musicology at Columbia University, who will deliver the lecture The Musical Language of Desire: Emotion and Cognition in Early Modern Italy. Gerbino’s research interests include the Italian madrigal, the relationship between music and language in the early modern period, early opera, and seventeenth-century theory of counterpoint.

African Percussion Group to Perform

Betsy Goolian

November 2008

Don’t miss the Biakuye Percussion Ensemble who will perform at Stamps Auditorium in the Walgreen Center on Monday, November 24, 8:00 p.m. Among the Akan people of Ghana, West Africa, “biakuye” means unity. Formed in 1993 by Mark Stone, a performer of global melodic percussion, the group brings American and African members together to perform music that unites the cool sound of American jazz vibraphone, drum-set, and electric bass with the richness of African marimba, kalimba, and hand drums. The group's original compositions and arrangements draw on a wealth of American and African melodic-percussion traditions including the Ghanaian gyil, Ugandan embaire, South African kalimba, Guatemalan marimba, and United States vibraphone. Biakuye includes master Ghanaian drummer Kofi Ameyaw, virtuoso American percussionist Roger Braun, and dynamic Senegalese bass player Issa Sall.

Chamber Choir to Perform Tuesday, November 25 at Stamps Auditorium in the Walgreen Center

Betsy Goolian

November 2008

Jerry Blackstone, director of choral activities at SMTD, leads the Chamber Choir through a varied program of works by Bártok, Brahms, Copland, and more. The concert features Aaron Copland’s In the beginning, with Kristin Eder, mezzo-soprano and DMA student in voice. Considered one of the greatest a cappella choral works of the 20th century, In the beginning presents monumental challenges and opportunities for both the choir and the mezzo-soprano soloist. The work tells the familiar account of creation with lyricism, dramatic declamation, free-flowing rhythmic sections counterbalanced with sections of jaunty and off-kilter accents, all the while building to the electrifying creation of man as “a living soul.” Also on the program is the Sechs Quartette, op. 112, nos. 1 and 2, by Brahms who set them to the work of Franz Kugler, an undiscovered poet he met through a mutual friend. Both poems chosen for this work explore the ominous aspects of night. A sense of desolation and solitude permeate both texts. In Bartok’s Four Slovak Folk Songs, the composer draws on the peasant songs he so often used as source material for his concert music.

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