Concerts this week and next

Forthcoming Activities in the

Department of Music

We invite you to experience our musical offerings for Spring 2012!  Here are a few of the concerts and recitals in the next two weeks.  As always, more details on these performances and up-to-date information on all Department of Music offerings, including the long roster of student recitals, small ensemble performances, and guest master classes is available at www.webster.edu/music, or simply click here for the direct calendar link.  Performance locations vary, so please check carefully in order to ascertain the specific hall.

Monday, January 30 at 7 p.m. – Jazz at Webster: Dave Black with Bridge; Moore Auditorium, 470 E Lockwood.  $

Monday, February 6 at 7 p.m. – Jazz at Webster: Black History Month Concert featuring the Willie Akins Quartet in the music of Cedar Walton; Moore Auditorium, 470 E Lockwood.  $  
http://www.webster.edu/news/releases/willie_akins_concert_1112108.shtml

Thursday, February 9 at 7 p.m. – Concert Series: Voice and Piano Faculty in Love Gone Wrong: Songs of Love Amuck; Recital Hall, Thompson Music Building, 8282 Big Bend.  $  
http://www.webster.edu/news/releases/lovegonewrong_concert_1112113.shtml

Sunday, February 12 at 4 p.m. – Concert Series: Daniel Schene, piano, in Faculty Recital; Moore Auditorium, 470 E Lockwood.  $

Sunday, February 12 at 7 p.m. – Webster Presents: Webster University Symphony Orchestra in a Strings-Only concert; Sheldon Concert Hall, 3648 Washington Blvd, Saint Louis 63108.  $

Creative

I have some tremendously creative students.  One of the assignments this week in MUSC 1010 for Musical Theatre majors (a course I’m teaching for the first time this year) was to develop a four-part canon of increasing rhythmic complexity, making up a text for it too.

Michael D. devised one so funny I just had to share it.  The text:

“Woof woof moo moo moo moo moo moo moo moo (repeat)
Dog cow
He’s a dog cow, not a cat dog
Woof moo moo woof moo moo woof (repeat)
Dogs eat hay and dogs eat pee-ple.  You a dog or you a cow pow!
Woof moo woof moo woof moo woof.  Woof moo woof moo woof moo woof woof!”

This student was obviously an over-achiever, since he wrote a six-part canon.  But we enjoyed performing it today in class nevertheless.

The lyricist and composer, as viewed on his Facebook profile.

A new day

In my office this afternoon.

The new semester – Spring 2012 – is nigh.  Classes begin in this department in less than 24 hours.

I’ve spent much of the last two days, including today’s holiday, at Thompson House, prepping syllabi for voice lessons and the theory class I’m teaching, catching up on email (and deleting old emails from the Inbox, which is now almost to 450), writing recommendation letters, checking in with voice students regarding this week’s auditions, engaging in some longer-range administrative planning and doing, and so on.

And I sang yesterday the Webster Groves/Rock Hill Martin Luther King Jr. event, which was lovely.

It’s now nearly 4 p.m., and on this MLK Day I am ready to head home, where later this evening my freshman music theatre students will gather for a little welcome back /slash/ late Christmas party.  I am making Jan Richard’s famous Polish Mistakes in hopes of keeping the tradition alive.

I’m ready for life at school to resume again. A four-week break is long enough.

 

Cornell Glee Club

The Cornell Glee Club sang a fabulous concert last evening in the CMS concert hall. Especially moving for me — Stephen Chatman’s Reconciliation on poetry by Walt Whitman, the spiritual arrangements, and of course the Cornell alma mater, sung to the same tune as the Kansas anthem, with many of the same words.

I hosted three of the guys at my house, providing them the Brie breakfast casserole this morning.  ‘Twasn’t a posh night, but the food this morning made up for the middle-classness of the lodgings.

Here’s a shot of Hangovers, the small ensemble of the Cornell Glee Club, in concert last evening:

Spring Convocation

The university president presided at our Spring Convocation yesterday.  Faculty and staff heard a number of updates and celebrated successes.  Take a look!

Cornell Glee Club

The Cornell University Glee Club performs at Webster University Wednesday evening, in one day’s time!  This group is the country’s collegiate first male glee club, and still one of its finest.  Don’t miss this concert!

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Webster University Department of Music hosts the Cornell University Glee Club on Wednesday, January 11, at 7.30 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the CMS Center, 535 Garden Avenue.  (Since this is a Repertory Theatre performance night, parking is the Garden Avenue parking structure.)

Tickets at the door are $15 cash or check, $5 for students and children.

We are hopeful of a large crowd for this oldest American university glee club!