Music To Be Thankful For, This Month At WestConn

DANBURY — Take a break from holiday planning to relax and enjoy music to be thankful for when Western Connecticut State University music students stage three concerts this month.

The performance will each begin at 8 pm in Ives Concert Hall/White Hall, at 181 White Street. Performances will be free and the public is invited; donations to support the music department will be accepted.

The first concert will be on Wednesday, November 18, featuring the WCSU Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band conducted by Fernando Jimenez. The Symphonic Band will begin the program with Respighi’s Airs of the Court, followed by The Immovable Do by Percy Aldridge Grainger. Passages, by Michael Sweeney, will complete the first half of the concert.

Following intermission, the Wind Ensemble will perform Sean O’Loughlin’s Burst, a spirited piece for wind band full of exciting rhythms and memorable melodies. Also included in the Wind Ensemble’s set will be Chorus Angelorum by Samuel Hazo and Mansions of Glory by David Gillingham. The concert will close with Vientos Y Tangos by Michael Gandolfi.

The WCSU Orchestra will perform on Thursday, November 19. The first half of the concert will be devoted to student soloists in performances of Vivaldi, Mozart and Mendelssohn. Bassoon soloist Dan Lovallo will open the program with one of Antonio Vivaldi’s energetic concerti for bassoon and string orchestra.

Mozart’s popular Concerto No. 21 in C major (K. 46) for Piano and Orchestra will follow, with student pianist Justin Vendette as the soloist. The orchestra will then offer two works by German composer Felix Mendelssohn: Concertpiece No. 1 for Two Clarinets and Orchestra will be played by WCSU student clarinetists Kari Frederickson and Aaron Marshall, followed by the last movement of Violin Concerto in E minor, by WCSU junior violinist Hafez Taghavi.

After the intermission, the WCSU Orchestra will expand to its full strength for a performance of the two last movements of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Symphonic Suite Scheherazade. These movements of the suite highlight soloists from the percussion, wind and cello sections.

On Tuesday, November 24, the WCSU Chamber Singers and Concert Choir will take the stage. The Chamber Singers will concentrate on music composed and arranged by Americans, beginning with two early American hymns arranged by Alice Parker.

Williametta Spencer’s “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners” will precede two movements of Cecil Effinger’s Four Pastorales for Oboe and Chorus with WCSU faculty artist Dr Mark Snyder accompanying the group. The men will take over with the barbershop standard, Vive L’Amour, with the women singing O Fondens Virga for women’s chorus, piano, and violin composed by the conductor, Dr Kevin Jay Isaacs.

WCSU Adjunct Professor Patricia Lutnes, accompanist for the group, and Dr Isaacs will lead the ensemble through The Waking, a Theodore Roethke poem composed by Giselle Wyers. The Chamber Singers will perform Robert Muczynski’s I Never Saw a Moor, and then the madrigal The Cricket’s Widow by Robert Baska.

Closing the program will be Shenendoah by jazz arranger Doug Andrews. In addition to the Chamber Singers, the Concert Choir will perform a variety of selections from Praetorius to Grotenhuis and three popular African American Spirituals. The concert will conclude with O Sifuni Mungu, an African rendering in the Swahili language of “All Creatures of our God and King,” accompanied by an instrumental combo and featuring two students who, through American Sign Language, will augment the text visually for the audience, adding another layer of interest to this foot-stomping piece.

For more information, call the WCSU Music Department at 203-837-8350.