Maestro Harvey to premier work as pianist at WMU
January 30, 2013
New music concert features student ensemble and baritone Carl Ratner
Who:
Birds on a Wire
David Colson, Conductor
Carl Ratner, Baritone
Raymond Harvey, Piano
WMU School of Music
What: Concert, Free Admission
When: Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Dalton Center Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
KALAMAZOO-Birds on a Wire, Western Michigan University's new music ensemble, conducted by David Colson, director of the School of Music, presents a concert with WMU professor of voice, Carl Ratner, and pianist Raymond Harvey, music director for the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 7 in the Dalton Center Recital Hall. Birds on a Wire will premiere Biodiversity, by WMU assistant professor of electronic composition, Christopher Biggs. Ratner and Harvey will premiere American Pierrot: A Langston Hughes Songbook, by composer Robert G. Patterson.
Biodiversity, a multimedia composition, was created with the generous support of the A & D Issa Music and Dance Faculty Award, awarded to Biggs by WMU's College of Fine Arts. The work, which abstractly reflects on biodiversity and human interactions with the environment that support or threaten biodiversity, features live and pre-recorded electronics as well as videos created by four multimedia artist collaborators, including WMU's Kevin Abbot, featuring choreography by professor of dance, David Curwen.
American Pierrot: A Langston Hughes Songbook was written specifically for Ratner, whom Patterson has known since junior high. The two then attended the same high school and undergraduate institution, the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College. American Pierrot features twelve poems by Langston Hughes arranged as a song cycle. Patterson will be in attendance at the premiere.
Media contact:
Meredith Bradford
Concerts Assistant & Seminar Registrar
School of Music
Western Michigan University
(269) 387-4678
meredith.bradford@wmich.edu
