Music from faculty, alumni and international performers comes to campus stages in 2011

Ward Hall
Free and open to the public

This recital titled Sacred Echoes will survey a sampling of sacred solo/duet vocal genres. The program will include excerpts from a Bach cantata, an oratorio by Handel, songs by John Jacob Niles set to poetry by Thomas Merton, an aria from the Verdi opera “Nabucco” based on the Bible story of Nebuchadnezzar, and a medley from the theatre production of “Godspell.”

 

Collaborating with the mother/son duo will be Melinda Parrish on piano, Alan Suska on trumpet, Dewayne Pigg on oboe, and Andrew Witherington on bassoon.

           

Jean Miller began teaching voice part-time at Lipscomb University in 1979, and she later taught voice at Illinois State University while completing her master’s degree. In 1995, she founded The Nashville Notes,a concert band for home educated students in the mid-state region, which she directed for 13 years. Miller has appeared several times in the Faculty and Friends Concert Series at Lipscomb. Other performances and awards include the role of Amahl in Amahl and the Night Visitors and a second-place finish in the National Association of Teachers of Singing competition in 1980.

 

 

 

Dan Gawthrop, composer-in-residence to the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra of Fairfax, Va., will conduct a day-long workshop on the Lipscomb campus, including sessions on commissioning a new piece and working with the composer to create it, making a living as a composer and music clinics with the Lipscomb High School Concert Chorus and the Lipscomb University A Cappella Singers.

 

The sessions are free and open to the public. They will begin at 10 a.m. in the Thomas James McMeen Music Center, room 206. For a detailed schedule, go to music.lipscomb.edu.

 

The high school choir will sing Gawthrop's most well-known choral work, "Sing Me to Heaven," and the A Cappella Singers will perform Gawthrop's "Prayer for Grace." The A Cappella Singers will also perform a new piece by junior composition student Julian Calvin, "House of Jacob," for Gawthrop to evaluate and critique.

 

Gawthrop has been the recipient of more than 100 commissions to write original music. He has had works première in the Concert Hall of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Salt Lake City Mormon Tabernacle and Washington National Cathedral. His choral pieces have been performed and recorded by such eminent ensembles as The United States Air Force Singing Sergeants, the American Boychoir, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Cathedral Choral Society.

 

 

Free and open to the public

Terri Richter, soprano; Francis Perry, lute and theorbo; Polly Brecht, harpsichord;
and friends will present “Cathedral, Court, and Countryside,” celebrating baroque music from Italy and England with songs by Monteverdi, Rossi, Handel and others.

 

Richter is a graduate of Lipscomb University and the Seattle Opera’s Young Artist Program. She went on to perform many roles with the Seattle Opera, earning national acclaim for her portrayals in “Cosi fan tutte” and “The Masked Ball.” Richter regularly appears as a soloist with orchestras and early music ensembles throughout the U.S., most recently with the Grand Rapids Symphony, Seattle Symphony and the Nashville Symphony’s performance of Handel’s “Messiah.”

 

 

The guest artists will perform Schubert’s “Winterreise.”

 

Duff studied music at Dublin Institute of Technology, Conservatory of Music and Drama. In 1996 he was the boy soprano soloist on the recording “Faith of our Fathers: Classic Religious Anthems of Ireland.” Previously this year Duff participated in Mozart's “Requiem” and at the Manchester International Music Festival. Mark has currently taken up a position on the Baylis, the opera works singing program at the English National Opera, London.

 

Loeffler holds a position as deputy lecturer in piano in the junior department of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. Also in February 2011, Loeffler will perform “Winterreise” with tenor Duff in the National Concert Hall in Dublin and subsequently perform the cycle at various other venues. Beginning in February, he will take up a visiting artist-in-residency position at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music and at Lipscomb University

 

For more information on any of these performances contact Marilyn Smith at 615.966.5929 or at marilyn.smith@lipscomb.edu.