April 10, 2008 issue
Responding to Disaster Through Music
Guest Performers Present Voices of Dissent Concert April 14
Story by Anna Oakes
Famine, natural and human-caused disasters, pollution, devastating accidents, hurricanes and earthquakes, the Iraq War—all of these are painful blotches that stain the world’s collective memory, and they are the subject of a special guest recital to be performed at Appalachian State University on Monday, April 14.
Two guest performers, saxophonist John Sampen and composer and pianist Marilyn Shrude, will present an 8:00 p.m. recital titled Voices of Dissent in the Broyhill Music Center’s Rosen Concert Hall. The program is a thematic representation of 21st-century composers’ and performers’ responses to issues of war, violence, corruption, racism and also tragic weather events. A reception will follow the recital.
The recital begins with “Les Oiseaux” by Japanese composer and saxophonist Ryo Noda. Written in 1977, the composition addresses the dangers posed by pollution. Recent events, including tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, famine and wars, are the subject of “Lamentations (pour la fin du monde)” by Claude Baker, another piece the duo performs.
Frederick Rzewski wrote the composition “The Fall of the Empire: Angel Shoot” for Sampen and Shrude; it explores humankind’s confusion of good and evil.
The Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity commissioned Shrude’s composition “Lacrimosa;” Sampen and Shrude premiered the piece in 2006. It is written in memory of music students from Bowling Green State University and Indiana University who were killed in a plane crash in 2006.
Sampen and Shrude also will perform “Voices of Dissent,” protest portraits by the composition faculty of Bowling Green State University; “Weapons of Mass Distortion,” Australian composer Martin Wesley-Smith’s collage of events and statements leading up to the Iraq invasion; and Vache Sharafyan’s “Sonata,” an image of Armenia haunted by centuries of invasion, war and holocaust.
Sampen is one of America’s leading concert saxophonists and a distinguished artist in contemporary literature.
Shrude has been on the faculty of Bowling Green State University since 1977, where she teaches and chairs the Department of Musicology/Composition/Theory. She is the founder and past director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music and co-directs the Annual New Music and Art Festival.
For more info, call 828-262-3020.
Want To Go?
Date: Monday, April 14
Time: 8:00 p.m.
Location: Rosen Concert Hall
Cost: Free
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