Maine Perspective Front Page
Center Stage
The Music of Women Composers
The second annual Women Composers concert will be at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 3, in Minsky Recital Hall.
Designed to complement the Women and Music course currently offered through Women's Studies, the concert will feature the Athena Consort, directed by Francis Vogt, music instructor, as well as students, local area musicians, and other faculty of the School of Performing Arts.
The program will include works by Amy Marcy Cheney Beach, Alma Mahler, Nadia Boulanger, Lili Boulanger, Alexandra Pakhmutova, Grazyna Bacewicz, Mary Ann Joyce Walter, and Binnette Lipper. It also will feature works by Beth Wiemann, assistant professor of music.
All That Jazz
The Jazz Ensemble will pay tribute to Ernie Wilkins, who died earlier this year, with a performance of his rhythm and blues-style composition, Blues for Big "E", as part of their concert with the Jazz Combo Thursday, Nov. 11, in Minsky Recital Hall.
Student soloists will highlight each of the works in the performance at 7:30 p.m. The Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Combo are conducted by Karel Lidral, director of jazz studies and associate professor of music.
On the program are other works such as Bird Count, by Maria Schneider, with writing reminiscent of jazz bassist Charles Mingus; Bone Voyage, by Lennie Niehaus, featuring the trombone section; Madelyn's Song, written by Matt Harris for his daughter; Nostalgia in Times Square by Charles Mingus and arranged by baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber, recorded by the Mingus Big Band; Rhythm Me This, by Doug Beach, based on the chord progression of George Gershwin's I Got Rhythm; and Take the "A" Train, Billy Strayhorn's landmark composition, arranged by Don Sebesky, that opened concerts by the Duke Ellington Orchestra for close to 50 years.
All of the UMaine Jazz Combo charts were arranged by Chicago pianist/composer/arranger Frank Mantooth, and include four compositions by the great tenor saxophonist John Coltrane.
Between Day and Night - and Other Percussion
Eight members of the Percussion Ensemble will give musical voice to that blue-gray time between day and night in a performance of Ziwschen Tag und Nacht by Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic, one of six works on the Tuesday, Nov. 16 program.
In one part of Ziwschen Tag und Nacht (Between Day and Night), the non-traditional, time-based notation requires the musicians to be coordinated by stopwatches. The intricate work also contains a style called "night-music," with musical depiction of night sounds using such instruments as wind chimes and bird calls. Even the lighting is part of the work.
The 7:30 p.m. concert in Minsky Recital Hall, under the direction of Associate Professor of Music Stuart Marrs, also will include: Tutti i battuti, tutto il tempo by Assistant Professor of Music Beth Wiemann, a study for non-pitched percussion instruments in unison rhythms, with sections in which the musicians play as one person, then competing; Marimba Phase by Steve Reich, featuring ever-changing harmonic combinations that can sound as though the musicians are actually moving around in the hall; Jovial Jasper by George Hamilton Green, arranged by Bob Becker, in the genre of xylophone rags; Eine Kleine Marimbamusik by Amadeus Mozart; and Toca Bonito by Henrik Beck, "salsa" for Percussion Ensemble.