WFU Department of Music ensembles to host guest composers in April

Two of WFU’s student ensembles, Concert Choir and the University Wind Ensemble, will perform newly-commissioned works by guest composers who will be in residence for concerts at the end of the semester. 

Concert Choir, conducted by Brian Gorelick, will perform the world premiere of Seattle-based composer John Muehleisen’s Peace, Night, Sleep, a setting of a poem by Carl Sandberg.  The work was commissioned by Wake Forest and will be dedicated to the victims of the recent tsunami and earthquake in Japan.  Muehleisen has served as Composer-in- Residence and Artistic Advisor for the Opus 7 Vocal Ensemble since 1996, and his choral works have been performed and recorded by numerous ensembles in the US, Canada, and Europe.  Peace, Night, Sleep will be a highlight of the program entitled “Music from the Pacific Northwest” to be performed at the Spring Choral Concert on Wednesday, April 20 at 7:30 pm. 

The University Wind Ensemble, conducted by Kevin Bowen and Philip Morgan, is part of a consortium of 29 wind ensembles in 13 states, funded by an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, that commissioned Minnesota-based composer Daniel Kallman to write a new piece. The result is a  four-movement work entitled There was a composer of genius…(A Whimsical Celebration of Four American Composers). The work is an homage to four of Kallman’s favorite American composers: Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Charles Ives and John Philip Sousa.  Kallman’s compositions for orchestra, winds, and choir are widely published and have been performed across North America, Europe and East Asia, by such ensembles as the National Symphony Orchestra, the Air Force Academy Band, the Hong Kong Children’s Choir, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the radio program A Prairie Home Companion.  The University Wind Ensemble concert will be Tuesday, April 26, at 7:30 pm.

Both concerts will take place in Brendle Recital Hall, and are free and open to the public. 

The Department of Music at Wake Forest encompasses the breadth of music. Faculty expertise ranges from Spanish vocal literature to nineteenth-century American solo and chamber music; from Beethoven to the tango; from women and music to the music of protest. It offers training in the breadth of studio instruments and both large and small ensembles, as well as two majors, and a wide spectrum of experts who excel within specialized areas yet are committed to an interdisciplinary approach. The department boasts 30 majors and minors and over 200 non-majors taking music courses or performing music.