As the semester draws to a close, there are still plenty of concerts to be had at The College at Brockport. The musical ensembles that are part of the Department of Theatre and Music Studies will be performing in their year-end recitals during “Spring Music Week 2018.” Each of the concerts starts at 7:30 p.m., and will be held in one of the venues in the Tower Fine Arts Center, 180 Holley Street, on the Brockport campus. Admission for each of the concerts is $5, payable at the door. Contact the department at (585) 395-2496 for more information.
•Wednesday, May 2 – The Brockport Xylophone Ensemble and the Brockport Brass Ensemble will perform in the Tower Mainstage. The xylophones will be doing a tribute to Michael Johnson, a Brockport student who has been in the group every semester and is graduating this May. The brass will perform a tribute to composer Stephen Foster. Natalie Sarrazin leads the xylophones, while Natalie Fuller directs the brass.
•Thursday, May 3 – Scott Horsington will lead the Brockport College-Community Orchestra in a concert in the Tower Mainstage featuring works by some of the greatest Classical composers. Gioachino Rossini will be represented by the “Overture” to L’Italiana in Algeri; Antonio Vivaldi’s “Concerto in A major for Guitar” will feature community member Al Mathias on guitar; and Richard Strauss’ “Concerto No. 1 for Horn” will similarly feature a guest soloist, Brockport graduate student Brittany White, on horn. The concert will conclude with the “Sinfonia” from Nebuchadnezzar by Giuseppe Verdi.
On that same evening, the Brockport Concert Band will make its debut, also under Horsington’s direction, opening for the orchestra. They will be performing four selections, including “Danny Boy” and “Variations on a Korean Folk Song,” by John Barnes Chance. Horsington adds that for one of the other selections, the audience “might feel that they are under the big top once again.”
•Friday, May 4 – Karl Stabnau will lead the Brockport Jazz Ensemble in a concert in the Tower Black Box Theatre.
•Saturday, May 5 – Music Week winds down with the Brockport College-Community Chorus in their spring concert, “Love in Bloom” in the Tower Mainstage. Tickets ($17/General, $12/Seniors, $9/Students) are available at http://fineartstix.brockport.edu, or by calling 395-2787.
When programming the concert, music director Elizabeth Banner managed to capture aspects of love from the ridiculous to the sublime. On the ridiculous end of the spectrum would be Johannes Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes. It’s not that the waltzes are ridiculous; it’s that Brahms’ love life was a little bizarre. At the other end of the spectrum is Eric Whitacre’s setting of “Five Hebrew Love Songs.” Whitacre asked his then-girlfriend Hila Plitman, a soprano who was born and raised in Israel, to write him a few “postcards” in her native Hebrew. He writes that “a few days later she presented me with these exquisite and delicate Hebrew poems … Each of the songs captures a moment that Hila and I shared together. ‘Kala Kalla’ (which means ‘light bride’) was a pun I came up with while she was first teaching me Hebrew.” The concert will also feature works by DiLasso, Lauridson, Mulholland, Meader and Stoope.
More information about the Fine Arts Series at The College at Brockport can be found at www.brockport.edu/academics/fine_arts or on Facebook.
