A laptop, a phalanx of cellos and lyrics from 1820s West Virginia will be part of a concert premiering new classical music.
"Outside the Box: New Music" will feature works by Stetson University music professors (from left) Nathan Wolek, Manuel de Murga and Sydney Hodkinson.
The concert also will include a performance by the Stetson Virtuosi, a new ensemble.
The concert will be at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 5 in Elizabeth Hall on the Stetson campus, 421 N. Woodland Blvd., DeLand. Admission is $8, seniors and area students $5. For more information, call 386-822-8950.
Wolek's "then I will be" continues his exploration of the laptop's role in chamber music by pairing a computer with piano. The laptop will be used to record and augment the sounds of the pianist's harmonic gestures, thereby creating new sonic textures.
"Winter Music," the new work by de Murga, is scored for 12 cellos and will feature a solo by cellist David Bjella.
Hodkinson's "A Pilgrim's Counsel" is composed of four ballads for voice and piano and will feature tenor and Stetson alumnus Ernie Murphy and Stetson professor Michael Rickman on piano.
The work is "more traditional than the other pieces on the program," Hodkinson said. The ballads feature "texts from early West Virginian folk lyrics from the 1820s and earlier dealing with things that were important to those people, our American forebears: singing of home life, the need for laughter, the hunger for love, the wish to escape -- creating words to express every human feeling.
"Ernie Murphy had been bugging me for a long time to write something for him, and these texts seemed to suit his very lyrical voice."
The Stetson Virtuosi, a chamber quintet, will perform a work by Princeton University composer Barbara White. The quintet, composed of members of the university's faculty, includes Bjella, Rickman, Routa Kroumovitch on violin, Susan McQuinn on flute and Lynn Musco on clarinet.
Stetson University photo
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