Faculty Artist Series: Mackenzie Jacob LaMont, Percussion

FSU’s Department of Music Presents Percussion Ensemble RecitalFrostburg State University’s Department of Music will present its Percussion Ensemble, directed by Dr. Mackenzie Jacob LaMont, in its spring performance on Friday, May 10, at 7:30 p.m. in the Pealer Recital Hall of FSU’s Woodward D. Pealer Performing Arts Center.Percussion Ensemble students include Benjamin Alvey, Gavin Baker, Leah Boggs, Bryce Campbell, Jacob Deaver, Grace Giles, Jacob Hunt, Jacob Hutzell, Joseph Louie, Eileen Martin, Bella McConnell, Joe Rubens and Julia Seddon. They will be joined by guest performers Dr. Joseph Yungen, Peter Lewis and Riess Mikula.The concert will include “Crown of Thorns” by David Maslanka, “Living Room Music” by John Cage, “Percussion Music” by Michael Colgrass and much more.The title “Crown of Thorns” is an obvious reference to Christ’s crown of thorns, but the name first came to Maslanka as a possible title for a piece after seeing a plant called the Crown of Thorns at the New York Botanical Gardens. Crown of Thorns is a thorny desert plant from the Middle East. The rambling, interweaving, vine-like stems suggested music to him. As he meditated on the words crown of thorns and the plant, and on the idea of a work for keyboard percussion ensemble, one image that arose was a seven-starred halo. The seven-starred halo is a transcended image of the crown of thorns, the crown of highest spiritual power arrived at through the greatest depth of suffering. The imagery is Christian, but the experience transcends religion, and is universal. The music is at times sober and reflective, but more often filled with a liberated energy and joy.One of the most influential 20th century composers, Cage pioneered a body of music that he described as “the contemporary transition from keyboard-influenced music to the all-sound music of the future.” “Living Room Music” is a piece Cage composed in 1940. It is a quartet for unspecified instruments, all of which may be found in a living room of a typical house, hence the title. “Living Room Music” is dedicated to Cage's then-wife Xenia. The work consists of four movements: “To Begin,” “Story,” “Melody” and “End.” Cage instructs the performers to use any household objects or architectural elements as instruments and gives examples: magazines, cardboard, “largish books,” floor, the wooden frame of a window, etc. The first and last movements are percussion music for said instruments. In the second movement, the performers transform into a speech quartet; the music consists entirely of pieces of Gertrude Stein’s short poem “The World Is Round” (1938) spoken or sung. The third movement is optional. It includes a melody played by one of the performers on “any suitable instrument.”“Percussion Music” (1952) was written while Colgrass was a sophomore at the University of Illinois. After using up all his jazz drum solo ideas in “Three Brothers,” he knew he needed to look outside of jazz for inspiration and decided to experiment with a Bach-like counterpoint on drums without specific pitches. He created a “keyboard” of 16 sounds from low drums to high temple blocks that were divided among four players. Since Bach’s music was non-percussive, Colgrass intended the work to be a gentle and melodic form of drumming, providing percussionists with a feeling of musical equality and respectability with classical musicians. The toy drum part was written for cardboard-shelled toy drums. These toy drums or “timp-toms” had a very clear pitch and a long decay and inspired Colgrass to write other works for drums with specific pitches. The part is often played on roto-toms.Admission is $10 for adults; $5 for seniors, members of the military and FSU faculty and staff; and free for students and children. Tickets are available at the University box office in the Lane Center Mondays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., by phone at 301-687-3137 or online at https://frostburgtix.universitytickets.com/w/event.aspx?id=2043. Tickets will also be available at the door on the evening of the concert.For more information, contact FSU’s Department of Music at 301-687-4109.

Frostburg State University’s Department of Music Presents Spring Choral ConcertFrostburg State University’s Department of Music will present its Spring Choral Concert, titled “Peace, Love and Happiness,” on Saturday, May 11, at 7:30 p.m. in the Pealer Recital Hall of FSU’s Woodward D. Pealer Performing Arts Center.Conducted by Dr. Scott Rieker, the FSU Chorale and Troubadours Tenor-Bass Choir will be joined by singers from Allegany College of Maryland and Mountain Ridge, Allegany and Fort Hill high schools for a springtime celebration of choral singing, featuring works by Pharrell Williams, The Beatles, Samuel Barber, Ivo Antognini, René Clausen and more.Tickets are $10 for adults; $5 for members of the military, seniors, and FSU faculty and staff; and free for students and children. Tickets are available at the University box office in the Lane Center Mondays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., by phone at 301-687-3137 or online at https://frostburgtix.universitytickets.com/w/event.aspx?id=2044. Tickets will also be available at the door on the evening of the concert.For more information, contact FSU’s Department of Music at 301-687-4109.

Chamber Singers Will Perform in Regional Premiere of ‘A Cappella Mass’FSU’s Department of Music will present its Chamber Singers, conducted by Dr. Scott Rieker, in the regional premiere of David Heck’s mesmerizing “A Cappella Mass” on Sunday, May 12, at 3 p.m. at the Rose Hill Cemetery Mausoleum, 535 Fayette St. in Cumberland. This event is free and open to the public.This Mother’s Day, join the FSU Chamber Singers in a magically unconventional setting for “Beauty, Ever-Ancient, Ever-New,” the East Coast premiere of Heck’s “A Cappella Mass.” In the dimly candle-lit interior of the Rose Hill Cemetery Mausoleum, these superb singers will explore the haunting harmonies and flowing melodies of this newly composed masterwork, with the composer himself in the audience. This concert is dedicated to Wilton Jenkins Young, the mother of George Young, whose substantial financial gifts made performance in this beautiful venue possible.

FSU’s Department of Music Presents Wind Studios RecitalFrostburg State University’s Department of Music will present its Wind Studios Recital on Monday, May 13, at 7:30 p.m. in the Pealer Recital Hall of FSU’s Woodward D. Pealer Performing Arts Center. This event is free and open to the public. The concert will also be livestreamed; click the “Join Stream” button on this page a few minutes before the recital is scheduled to begin, or any time during the recital, to view the live performanceThe concert will feature music majors from the Clarinet Studio of Dr. Mark Gallagher, the Saxophone Studio of Dr. Brent Weber and the Trumpet Studio of Dr. Donald Albrecht. Dr. Joseph Yungen will be the collaborative pianist, with guest artists Peter Lewis on bass, Chassady Redhead on violin and Evie Shanholtz on viola.The program will include “Andante – Allegro” and “Allegretto” from “Fourth Trio for Clarinets” by Jacques Bouffil; “Two Jazz Duets” by John LaPorta; “Tuxedo” by Nick Holmes; the first movement of “Sonata for Trumpet and Piano” by Kent Kennan; “Moon River” by Henry Mancini, arranged by Max Partlow; the three movements, “Lebhaft,” “Mässig Langsam” and “Lebhaft,” of “Konzertstück für Zwei Altsaxophone” by Paul Hindemith; and “Salamander” by Wayne Siegel.Bouffil was a prominent 19th-century French clarinetist and composer. His compositions for clarinet duet and trio are some of the most worthwhile written for the medium. They are full-scale works of considerable substance and were doubtless intended for performance by professionals.LaPorta was a jazz clarinetist and composer. At one point it looked as if he would be one of the leading clarinetists in modern jazz, but he chose the educator’s chair instead. He was a fixture at Berklee College of Music for many decades and played a pivotal role in the earliest stage of formalized American jazz education, shaping the unique Berklee curriculum. He wrote 15 books on music education and more than two hundred compositions.Holmes is a musician, saxophonist, educator and musical mentor. “Tuxedo” is a musical score for two alto saxophones. It contains musical notation across three staves for each saxophone, including notes, rhythms, dynamics and other performance instructions. The score consists of multiple pages of music for the two instruments to play together.Kennan was an American composer, author, educator and professor. His compositions include works for orchestra, chamber ensemble and solo instrument as well as songs and choral music. His “Sonata for Trumpet and Piano” is part of the standard repertoire for many collegiate trumpet studios.“Moon River” is a song composed by Mancini with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. It was originally performed by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Mercer wrote three sets of lyrics, his favorite version inspired by the full moon over a river near his childhood home in Savannah, Ga.Hindemith was a German and American composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) style of music in the 1920s. Hindemith composed “Concert Piece for Two Alto Saxophones” in 1933. Sigurd Raschèr, one of the best-known classical saxophonists of the 20th century, commissioned the work from Hindemith.“Salamander” (2019) is a sequel to “Jackdaw,” a piece that Siegel wrote 24 years earlier. The piece starts with a slow, dreamy section that is interrupted by a quick and lively section and that finally returns to a palindrome version of the first slow section.For more information, contact FSU’s Department of Music at 301-687-4109.

FSU’s Department of Music Presents Dr. Joseph Yungen in Faculty Artist Series ConcertFrostburg State University’s Department of Music will present Dr. Joseph Yungen in a Faculty Artist Series concert on Tuesday, May 14, at 7:30 p.m. in the Pealer Recital Hall of FSU’s Woodward D. Pealer Performing Arts Center. This event is free and open to the public. The concert will also be livestreamed; the link will be posted at www.frostburg.edu/concerts.Yungen will perform “Prelude and Fugue in D Major, BWV 874” and “Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 885” from “The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2” by Johann Sebastian Bach; “Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm (Nos. 148-153)” from “Mikrokosmos, Book 6” by Béla Bartók; “Six moments musicaux, Op. 16” by Sergei Rachmaninoff; the three movements, “Das Lebewohl (Les Adieux – The Farewell),” “Abwesenheit (L’Absence – The Absence)” and “Wiedersehen (Le Retour – The Return),” of “Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-flat Major, Op. 81a,” known as “Les Adieux” (“The Farewell”) by Ludwig van Beethoven; and the seven movements of “Fantasies, Op. 116” by Johannes Brahms. The following text is from Yungen’s program notes.The “Clavier” is part of Bach’s 48 preludes and fugues that explore the 12 major and minor keys. Bach had been coming from meantone temperament, which allowed for a handful of keys to sound beautifully in tune, but with the tradeoff being that other keys would sound particularly harsh and discordant. Well temperaments make more keys accessible by redistributing and minimizing the imperfect intervals. The result is that each key has its own color and character, which Bach exploits in WTC. So, rather than demonstrating that “all keys are equal,” as is a common misconception, Bach is demonstrating how all keys may now be used on the keyboard, and they are all wonderfully different.Originally written as a collection of pedagogical studies for his son, and still used for beginning piano instruction to this day, Bartók’s “Mikrokosmos” spans six volumes, beginning with simple unison melodies and culminating in complex virtuoso concert works. The “Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm” at the end of the final volume showcase Bartók’s work in collecting folk music from the Balkans and integrating it into his modern musical language.Drawing upon traditional forms such as the nocturne, virtuoso etude, song without words, barcarolle, and theme and variations, Rachmaninoff’s “Opus 16” was inspired by Franz Schubert’s “Six Moments musicaux.” Although Rachmaninoff composed these pieces to dig himself out of a financial hole after being robbed on a train, they are of the highest quality and demonstrate the maturation of his compositional technique for the piano.Beethoven’s “Les Adieux sonata” marks the end of the master’s middle period and the start of his late period. The piece paints a picture musically and pianistically of a departure and heartfelt goodbye. The sonata opens with a descending horn motif. As the music unfolds, one can hear the rhythm of horses galloping away into the distance while the pianist’s hands move farther and farther apart, with the Lebewohl motif recurring throughout. The second movement, “The Absence,” evokes the emptiness of the friend’s absence, with harsh dissonances and moments of false hope. However, the despairing mood is alleviated at the end of the movement, changing from suspense to anticipation as it leads into a joyful reunion in the final movement.Written in his final years, Brahms’ “Fantasies, Op. 116” are highly concentrated compositional gems. These bittersweet, mostly melancholy pieces are full of interesting contrapuntal ideas, independent voice leading and pianistic effects. Most likely written with his beloved friend Clara Schumann in mind, with whom Brahms had a rather complicated relationship, these short piano works span the range of expression from vehement passion to intimate nostalgia.For more information, contact FSU’s Department of Music at 301-687-4109.