Guitar Night at Bistro

Guitar students of John Doan will perform Thursday, Nov. 30, at 8 p.m. at the Bistro at Willamette University. The concert is free and open to the public.

“The Bistro is an intimate coffee shop setting, and almost anything that can be played on the guitar will be performed,” Doan said. “Be ready to hear classical, blues, folk and other traditions from some of the most talented guitarists in Salem.”

A special appearance of Willamette’s guitar class will highlight the evening. Doan will also play previews from his upcoming Christmas concert, as well as music for a rare three-necked guitar.

“This may be Willamette’s biggest guitar happening of the year,” Doan said. "The Bistro is cozy, so come early for a good seat.” For more information call 503-370-6174.

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Community Invited to Star Trees Lighting

The Salem community is invited to the tenth annual Star Trees Lighting Saturday, Dec. 2, at Willamette University. The free program begins at 6:30 p.m., in front of Waller Hall on 900 State Street, across from the State Capitol Building. A family holiday concert will follow at 7 p.m. at Smith Auditorium on the Willamette campus.

Prior to the event, Bon Appetit will provide an all-you-can-eat holiday dinner from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at Goudy Commons on the Willamette campus. The cost is $7.50 for adults and $4 for children six years of age and younger.

The tree lighting event will include music, a welcome from University President Lee Pelton and former Salem First Citizen George Puentes, and hot chocolate and cookies, provided by the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. A drawing will be held for a boy and girl to flip the switch that lights the trees. They will also receive $100 savings bonds from MaPS Credit Union and $50 gift certificates from the Willamette Store on campus. Beta Theta Pi advises attendees to dress warm, and invites community members to bring coats or contributions for their annual Penny Coat Drive.

Planted in 1942, the five giant Sequoias at Willamette are the tallest trees on any U.S. campus. They are referred to as “Star Trees” because the view from the center looking upward creates a beautiful star-shaped view of the sky. Campus lore says that if two people kiss under the Star Trees they are destined for true love. (Numerous couples have tested this premise, but no statistical follow-up survey has been conducted.)

Sponsors include Willamette University, Dick and Linda Carney (CFP Inc.), Elwood’s Tree Service, MaPS Credit Union and Bon Appetit. For more information call 503-375-5304.

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Victorian Christmas with John Doan

“A Victorian Christmas with John Doan,” a holiday tradition in its 20th season, comes to Willamette University Sunday, Dec. 10, at 7 p.m. The concert, in Willamette’s Smith Auditorium, re-enacts what it might have been like to celebrate Christmas a century ago.

“The show explores how Victorians invented many Christmas traditions we remember and quite a few we have forgotten,” the Willamette associate professor of music said. “The aim is to recapture the feeling of a time before radio and TV when our ancestors provided most of their own musical entertainment at home, especially during the holidays.”

Doan will play more than a dozen turn-of-the-century instruments once popular in American parlors, on vaudeville stages and in mandolin orchestras. The 20-string harp guitar, classical banjo and ukelin are a few of the original instruments to be featured. Doan explains their history in an entertaining and often zany fashion, shows slides of old catalogs and archival photographs, and leads the audience by singing or whistling many of our most beloved American carols.

Doan is a touring and recording artist who has appeared on radio and television across the country. The festive Christmas program is a live version of Doan’s Emmy-nominated Oregon Public Broadcasting television special.

Advance tickets are $12 for adults and $10 for seniors and children under 12 and are available at Willamette’s Music Department or by phone at 503-370-6255. Willamette University students, faculty and staff may acquire free tickets up to one week prior to the event, but tickets are limited. For more information see www.johndoan.com.

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New Music Series to Present John Peel 60th Birthday Concert

New Music at Willamette University presents a free 60th Birthday Concert for Composer-in-Residence John Peel. The concert will present selections from three decades of Peel’s chamber and vocal music output. Performers will include the Oregon Symphony String Quartet, organist Paul Klemme, sopranos Janice Johnson and Allison Swensen-Mitchell, baritone Kevin Walsh, cellist Hekun Wu, and pianists Elise Yun and Janet Coleman.

Peel came to Willamette University in 1990 to occupy the newly created Irene Gerlinger Swindells Professor of Music Endowed Chair. Important recent premieres of Peel’s music include the “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra,” premiered by the Riverside Symphony in Lincoln Center with violinist Joseph Lin, and the “Sinfonia Romanza,” premiered by the Oregon Symphony in 2005 under Maestro James DePreist. At Willamette University Peel has taught music composition, as well as courses on opera, Wagner and the history of 20th century music. In addition he has created the concert series, New Music at Willamette, a series devoted to presenting the finest composers and performers of our time.

The Oct. 29 Birthday Concert will take place in Hudson Hall in the Mary Stuart Rogers Music Center on the Willamette campus. The public is welcome. For more information, contact the Willamette University Music Department at 503-370-6255.

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Willamette Musicians Debut in Carnegie Hall

The Willamette University Chamber Choir will perform Haydn’s “Mass in Time of War” Sunday, April 23, at 7 p.m. in Hudson Hall at Willamette University. The concert is open to the public and free, although a goodwill donation is encouraged to help students pay for an upcoming performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City, where the same piece will be performed.

The 40-voice Willamette Chamber Choir recently performed for 3,500 people in Washington and Oregon, and was invited by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to perform in South Africa in 2004. Music from their South African tour is featured on their fifth CD, “Thula Sizwe: A Celebration of Hope.”

For the Carnegie performance, Choral Conductor Wallace Long will direct the Willamette Chamber Choir, the Willamette Alumni Choir and choirs from Sheldon High School and the First Christian Church (Eugene, Ore.), Beaverton High School (Beaverton, Ore.), Marshfield High School (Coos Bay, Ore.) and River Ridge High School (Lacey, Wash.).

Long, who has served as director of choral activities at Willamette since 1983, said, “Great choral music contains drama and emotional sensitivity. The attraction of taking great literature, interpreting and understanding it, bringing performers into the magic of it, and then giving it as a gift to an audience, has never wavered for me.”

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Oregon Symphony to Premiere Peel’s Work

The Oregon Symphony will feature the world premiere of composer John Peel’s “Sinfonia romanza” Tuesday, Oct. 25, at 8 p.m. in the Smith Auditorium at Willamette University. Peel is the composer-in-residence at the University.

Portland performances will take place Saturday, Oct. 22, and Sunday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m., and Monday, Oct. 24, at 8 p.m. in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

The night of classical music will also include two sweeping Romantic-era pieces, Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” and Chopin’s “Piano Concerto No. 1,” with James DePreist conducting and Horacio Gutierrez as piano soloist.

“Sinfonia” was composed in the desert of eastern Oregon, in a landscape of ancient volcanic ruins.

“It no doubt affected my sense of musical time and connectedness,” Peel said.

The piece is—in turns—brooding, heroic, lyrical, pastoral and brusque, and filled with unexpected elements, such as nostalgic tenor-tuba chorales and an unaccompanied horn solo. The one-movement symphony moves through a world of harmony that is at times lean and at times lush. Spiky woodwinds and biting trumpets give way throughout to velvety, muted strings and horns.

Peel is one of Oregon’s premier composers, having received numerous awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Fund and other agencies. Major ensembles that have commissioned and performed Peel’s chamber and orchestral music include the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Riverside Symphony, the American String Quartet, the New Arts Trio and Cuarteto Latinoamericano.

Peel was appointed composer-in-residence and Irene Gerlinger Swindells Professor of Music at Willamette in 1990. In this position, he has written new compositions and organized concerts, residencies and lectures.

“John has introduced Salem audiences to world-class performers and composers of new music,” said Carol Long, dean of Willamette’s College of Liberal Arts.

Tickets range from $20 to $38, and may be purchased at Safeway TicketsWest (1-800-992-8499).

Willamette University staff, students and faculty may purchase tickets for the Portland performances at a 20 percent discount by calling the Oregon Symphony Box Office at 1-503-416-6380, between 2 p.m. and 9 p.m. weekdays. For the Salem performance, Willamette University staff, students and faculty may contact the Music Department at 503-370-6255 to arrange for discounted tickets. Students may also purchase tickets at the door for $5.

For more information call the Oregon Symphony Association in Salem at 503-364-0149.

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Ensemble Kaboul Brings Afghan Music to Salem

Note: Willamette staff, faculty and students can purchase tickets at the Music Department. Faculty and staff tickets are $12; student tickets are $3. Community members may purchase tickets at all Safeway TicketsWest outlets or by calling 1-800-992-8499. (There may be a service charge.) Tickets are $20 for adults and $12 for students and seniors. (11 October 2005)

The Grace Goudy Distinguished Artist Series will feature Ensemble Kaboul, with special guest Ustad Farida Mahwash, Monday, Nov. 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Mary Stuart Rogers Music Center at Willamette University.

Ensemble Kaboul combines the talents of six exiled Afghan musicians, weaving together traditional Indian, Persian, Arabic and tribal traditions to form rich, multi-textured music. Their performances blend poetic love songs, folk tunes and raga-like classical music, and feature hand percussion and flute-like and stringed instruments.

The group was recognized by BBC Radio with a World Music Award in 2003.

“No nation in recent history has suffered as greatly as Afghanistan,” said the BBC’s Garth Cartwright. “And amongst the many tribulations that nation’s citizens had to endure was the banning of all music—both making and playing—by the Taliban.” The post 9/11 removal of the Taliban led to a surge of interest in Afghan arts, Cartwright said. “Mahwash and Ensemble Kaboul are the best exemplars of Afghanistan’s traditional musical aesthetic.”

The Salem performance features Ustad Farida Mahwash, a powerhouse singer who was given the honorary title, “Ustad,” meaning “master.” No woman in the history of Afghanistan had been called “Ustad,” until Mahwash came along. She got her unexpected start while working as a typist at a radio station. When the radio director broadcast her songs during the 1960s and ’70s, her popularity led to a loosening of laws banning public performances by women.

“It’s an honor to represent Afghan women, whose voices have been suffocated,” Mahwash said.

Music making was also disrupted by the Afghan-Soviet conflict that began in 1979 and ended 20 years later.

“Afghanistan has suffered 23 years of war,” said Ensemble Kaboul leader Khaled Arman. “Most of the musicians have not survived. I don’t mean they died in combat. I mean they suffered psychological trauma. They couldn’t stand the weight of war and emigration. Now some of our instruments are disappearing because nobody is able to play them.”

The troupe’s exiled musicians have yet to play in Kaboul.

“Ensemble Kaboul not only brings rich, beautiful music to international audiences, but it is preserving one of the oldest musical traditions in the world,” said Pam Moro, anthropology professor at Willamette.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $12 for students and seniors and can be purchased at the Music Department at Willamette. People may also contact TicketsWest at 1-800-992-8499 or www.ticketswest.com. (There may be a service charge.) Call Moro at 503-370-6645 for more information.

The public is invited to a free lecture Thursday, Nov. 10, at 12:45 p.m. in the Hatfield Room at the Hatfield Library at the University. Moro will introduce the audience to Afghani music, and will discuss the impact of politics on performance in Afghanistan as well as broader issues related to music and censorship.

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Harp Guitarists to Gather in Oregon

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Final Concert for Conductor McIntosh

Salem Chamber Orchestra conductor Bruce McIntosh will pass the baton to guest conductor Charles Heiden in a concert Sunday, March 13, at 7 p.m. in Hudson Hall in the Mary Stuart Rogers Music Center at Willamette University.

The concert will feature soloists Daniel Rouslin, Salem Chamber Orchestra concertmaster, and Michinobu Iimori, first chair oboe. The evening program includes works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonin Dvorak and Bohuslav Martinu.

Tickets may be purchased at Jackson’s Books (503-399-8694) or by calling the orchestra office at 503-375-5483.

McIntosh founded the Salem Chamber Orchestra as the Willamette Community Orchestra in 1984. He has been teaching music at the University since 1969.

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Concert will Introduce New Music Faculty Member

On Sept 16 at 7:30 pm in Hudson Hall, Mary Stuart Rogers Music Building, Dr. Susan St. John will introduce herself to the Willamette community in grand style. St. John, a voice instructor and the new director of the Willamette University Musical Theatre/Opera Workshop, will join with Portland accompanist/conductor Richard Bower to present a concert of diverse vocal music from the classical and musical theatre repertoire. St. John and Bower specialize in entertaining and thought-provoking recitals that combined the various styles of Leonard Bernstein, Mozart, Donizetti, Kurt Weill, Britten, Copland, Puccini, Stephen Sondheim and others.

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Thula Sizwe: A Celebration of Hope South Africa Tour Benefit Concert

Tickets are now on sale at the Willamette University Music office. Tickets are $10 general admission; $5 for Seniors/Students with ID and the Willamette Community; and, Children 6 and under are free. You may charge by phone at 503-370-6255, or purchase tickets in person. For more information, to make a tax-deductible donation, or to order CD’s, please contact the Willamette University Department of Music, 900 State St., Salem, Oregon 97301, (503) 370-6255.

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Oregon Symphony to Premiere Work By Willamette University Professor

The performances of my Sinfonia Romanza with the Oregon Symphony, originally scheduled for March 13-16, have been postponed. The conductor, James DePreist, was severely incapacitated this past week with spinal problems. It is unclear, at this time, when the piece will be premiered. The new times will be posted as soon as the rescheduling process is complete. (03/09/04)

The Oregon Symphony, under the direction of Maestro James DePreist, will present the premiere performance of Sinfonia Romanza by John Peel, the Irene Gerlinger Swindells Professor of Music and Composer in Residence at Willamette University, March 13-15 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland and on March 16 in Smith Auditorium at Willamette University.

The performance is part of the subscription concert that includes works by Mozart, “Horn Concerto #4,” and Tchaikovsky, “Symphony #4.”

Tickets for the Portland performance range from $17 to $76 and may be reserved by calling 1-800-228-7343 or 503-228-1353. The March 13 and 14 performances begin at 7:30 p.m. The March 15th performance begins at 8 p.m.

Tickets for the 8 p.m. March 16th Willamette University Smith Auditorium performance range from $17 to $35 and may be purchased at Ticketwest, located in area Safeway stores.

After completing an undergraduate degree at the University of Texas, John Peel pursued graduate studies in music composition at Columbia University and Princeton University where his teachers included Milton Babbitt, Benjamin Boretz, J.K. Randall, Claudio Spies and Charles Wuorinen.

Peel's works range from solo and chamber pieces to symphonic and operatic compositions. Major ensembles that have commissioned and performed Peel's music include the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Riverside Symphony, the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic, the American String Quartet, Collage, Music Today, the New Arts Trio, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, and Parnassus.

He has received awards and grant support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Heinz Foundation, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, Meet-the-Composer and the American Music Center.

Recent major performances include the opera-oratorio Voces Vergilianae, commissioned by Willamette University for the dedication of the Mary Stuart Rogers Music Center and the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, premiered in New York's Lincoln Center with the Riverside Symphony and violinist Joseph Lin.

Recordings of Peel's music are available on the Vienna Modern Masters label (with the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic) and on Americus Records (with soprano Susan Narucki).

A professor of music at Willamette since 1990, Peel teaches music composition, music history and aesthetics and has created New Music at Willamette, a series of concerts, residencies and lectures dedicated to presenting the finest performers and composers of our time.

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Concert to Benefit Chamber Choir Effort

The New Music Series presents Hector Olivera and the Willamette University Chamber Choir in concert Thursday, Dec. 3, at 7 p.m. in Hudson Hall, Mary Stuart Rogers Music Center, Willamette University.

Tickets are $20 and $12. For ticket information, call 503-370-6255. Concert proceeds will benefit the Willamette University Chamber Choir’s efforts to fund a concert tour to South Africa.

Hector Olivera was a church organist in his native Argentina at age 5. He entered the Buenos Aires Conservatory at age 6 and the University of Buenos Aires at age 12. He then received a scholarship to the Julliard School of Music in New York. He had performed more than 300 concerts by age 18.

He has performed in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Hall, the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris; London’s Albert Hall and for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

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CD Sales to Help Fund Choir Trip to South Africa

Last April, as part of the University’s Atkinson Lecture Series, the Willamette University Chamber Choir sang for Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the song made people cry. The Archbishop was moved. He said come to my home and sing for my people. The Chamber Choir is now selling a CD to help pay for the trip that will allow University students to sing for the people of South Africa.

“Hope for Resolution” is both the name of the song the Choir sang for the Archbishop and of the title of the CD now available through the Willamette University Music Department.

This moving work combines the traditional South African anthem, “Thula Sizwe,” sung in Zulu, with the English hymn, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” Composed for former President Nelson Mandela by Sean Ivory and Paul Caldwell, the vastly disparate styles of European Hymnody and South African rhythmic choral singing are blended into a powerful statement for the peaceful coexistence of people from differing backgrounds and experiences.

The Willamette Chamber Choir is a 48-voice ensemble open by audition to all Willamette University students.

For more information, to make a tax-deductible donation, or to order CD’s, please contact the University Music Department at 503-370-6255.

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Willamette Students Sing for CBS on Christmas Eve

Put together 235 singers, 16 instrumentalists, 14 bell ringers, one giant pipe organ, 26 microphones, six television cameras, miles of cabling and 85 spotlights burning more than 56,000 watts an hour and what do you get? This year’s nationally televised CBS/Hallmark Christmas Eve Special featuring 118 Willamette University students singing in three University choirs.

Local technical crews arrived on Nov. 18 and spent two days stringing lights, building platforms and setting up cameras at the First Presbyterian Church in Salem. The show was taped Nov. 20 and will air Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) in the 11:30 p.m. (10:30 p.m. Central and Mountain Standard Time) timeslot normally reserved for David Letterman. It’s anticipated that at least 2.6 million people will tune in Christmas Eve to hear Willamette’s singers and three other choirs and instrumentalists in the 59-minute program.

The magician behind this musical extravaganza has been Christine Welch, a music instructor at Willamette and director of Voce Femina, Willamette’s 40-voice women’s choir. She is also the musical director at the First Presbyterian Church where she directs the 60-member mixed Chancel Choir. She says coordination was the key in making this mammoth event run smoothly.

“I had this notebook I carried around for weeks,” Welch said in a recent interview. “It contained the answers to everything anyone might ask about this event. I had six different schedules typed up from every group and their accompanying instrumentalists.”

Welch, who joked that CBS stood for “Christine’s Busy Season,” said the biggest challenge was “the chorography, making sure that for these certain minutes I had these people here and for those certain minutes I had those people there.”

Paul Klemme, who directs the Male Ensemble Willamette, says Christine Welch was the “perfect person” to harmoniously bring together 266 voices and instruments. “It takes someone like Christine who has vision and is willing to put in a tremendous amount of energy to organize something like this,” he said. “She’s a consummate musician and has a good feel for what this sort of event needs.”

It was Welch’s job not only to musically prepare her choirs, but to direct five of the six choirs, the bell ringers and the instrumentalists during the concert. The groups had never performed together before. They rehearsed together one Saturday, had a three-hour technical rehearsal and then the television cameras rolled.

Willamette music professor Wallace Long, who directed the university’s mixed-voice Chamber Choir during the performance, said one of the biggest problems was finding enough space for everyone. While the First Presbyterian Church’s sanctuary is relatively large, 266 singers, instruments and a plethora of lighting and taping equipment filled the space quickly. “Physically trying to provide space for musicians like violinists to move without stabbing someone with their bow is really a challenge,” said Wallace. “Christine had to find a place for all the vocalists and instrumentalists during the performance where they could see and hear her and one another. It was a real challenge.”

Wallace’s Chamber Choir, the only group to perform solo, sang an arrangement of “There Will Be Rest.” A challenge for him was fitting the song into the precise 4½-minute time slot. “The song was longer than the time allotted. I had to decide how to carefully move parts of it faster to fit into the time slot.”

Willamette students like Krysta Drechsler, a member of Voce Femina, said they found participating in a nationally televised musical program “really exciting. I’m way excited. I’d never done anything this big.”

Voce Femina sang “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” with the Presbyterian’s mixed-voice choir, accompanied by brass, organ and hand bells.

Drechsler, a junior majoring in English, said the biggest challenge for her was “getting used to the sound. In rehearsal, we’re used to hearing just women’s voices. The sound was completely different with an orchestra and another choir.”

Curtis Bell, who sings low base in Male Ensemble Willamette and the Chamber Choir, said the biggest challenge was “putting the different groups together. There are different conductors with different styles and we’ve been trained to do different things.”

Bell believes he was able to avoid getting too stressed out about being on national television by staying focused. “You have to stay focused on the music and the performance,” he said. “We were able to keep our heads in the music and not get carried away with national TV and all the hype.”

For Willamette music major Alice Jolly, singing in the CBS program was especially important because it will give her a way to share Christmas with her family in Honolulu. “I don’t get to go home for Christmas this year,” she said. “My parents can turn on the TV in Hawaii on Christmas Eve and see me. That’s really special.”

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