Everything Nac

Performer, teacher and composer Chris Whyte will present a guest percussion recital at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 6, in Cole Concert Hall on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University.

The recital, titled “With Tape,” is a feature of the SFA School of Music’s Calliope Concert Series and will include a program of works by Bob Becker, Paul Bissell and Bruce Hamilton.

“Each of the works on this program is for solo percussion with digital audio accompaniment,” Whyte said.

Becker’s “Lahara” was composed in 1977 after his extensive study of North Indian classical music. He utilized traditional forms and rhythms found within compositions for Indian classical instruments, and he employs them in the realm of pseudo-rudimental western drumming, according to Dr. Brad Meyer, director of percussion studies at SFA.

“Through this progression of forms, Becker attempts to invoke the rhythmic quality and character of table drumming,” Meyer said.

Bissell’s “The Alabados Song” stems from a fading tradition of Hispanic/Catholic communities in the southwest United States.

“As families and entire villages moved in the early 1900s from Mexico and other South American countries into the United States, they created communities in America not serviced by a formal church or clergy due to their geographical isolation,” the composer wrote. “For religious events, these groups had to improvise their own ceremonies, including the ceremony of last rites for the dying.”

Hamilton composed “EDGE (Corrugated Box)” in 1991 for an assortment of drums, cymbals, accessory percussion instruments and vibraphone.

“The tape and solo parts interact seamlessly throughout the approximately 15-minute work,” Whyte explained. “Hamilton’s aesthetic makes use of constant cross-rhythmic textures and metric modulations to weave rhythmic and melodic themes together.”

Tickets are $8 for adults, $6 for seniors and $3 for students and youth. For tickets or more information, call the SFA Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or visit www.finearts.sfasu.edu.

The Stephen F. Austin State University College of Fine Arts and School of Music will present the SFA Percussion Ensemble in concert at 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, in Cole Concert Hall on the SFA campus.

Under the direction of Dr. Brad Meyer, director of percussion studies at SFA, the ensemble will perform works by Thierry De Mey, Steve Reich, Marc Mellits, John Psathas, Owen Clayton Condon and Matt Moore.

The concert will also feature the premiere performance of “Aqua Vitae” by Stephen Gorbos. SFA’s Phi Boota Roota percussion fraternity was part of the consortium that funded the new work.

The Percussion Ensemble will perform De Mey’s “Musique de Table,” which is visual as well as aural.

“The piece must be seen as well as heard,” De Mey said. “The piece has the structure of a baroque suite.” (The inspiration is an 18th century form called “Tafelmusik,” originally played to entertain guests while they sat at a table eating). “It’s a serious piece, yet it has humor built into it.”

The program also includes “Six Marimbas” by Reich; “Kyoto” by Psathas; “Fractalia” by Condon; “Critical Mass” by Moore; and “Gravity” by Mellits.

Commissioned by international consortium percussion groups from around the globe, “Gravity” was written for a combination of marimbas and vibraphones, and the mixture of sound that these different materials make provide a spring board for the musical lines to intersect, bounce, and play off each other, always getting faster, always “falling from the sky,” according to Mellits.

“While writing ‘Gravity,’ I found myself thinking about how musical notes and lines can become attracted to each other and follow one another,” he wrote in describing the piece. “With a musical gravitational force, the lines follow each other, then bounce back and forth together. The overall rhythm and tempo also shifts in a ‘gravitational’ way. The music continually gets faster and faster, always picking up speed as it falls, spiraling into a new tempo at each musical shift in texture.”

Tickets are $8 for adults, $6 for seniors and $3 for students and youth. For tickets or more information, call the SFA Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or visit www.finearts.sfasu.edu.

The Madrigal Singers at Stephen F. Austin State University will present a choral program, “Sacred and Profane,” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2, in Cole Concert Hall on the SFA campus.

The concert will explore themes of love, nature, the divine and exotic fairy tales, according to Dr. Michael Murphy, director of choral activities at SFA.

The program includes “Trois Chansons,’ or “Three Chansons,” by Maurice Ravel.

These three French songs give an interesting twist to the fairy tale of Red Riding Hood, a song of merciless conflict and a fantasy about forest creatures, Murphy explained.

Also on the program is A Set of Chinese Folk Songs by Chen Yi, who was the first woman in China to receive a Master of Arts in Musical Composition. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1969, Chen was sent to the work camps for forced labor. Even though she was unable to practice her violin for many years, she developed a love for folk songs that she would regularly hear in the countryside.

The SFA Madrigal Singers will perform three of her folk song arrangements. “Diu Diu Deng” has the choir portraying a steam locomotive. “Mayila” is a song about a young girl singing songs and playing the dongbula. And, “Riding on a Mule” exhibits vocal percussive sounds and pentatonic melodies. Now a professor of composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Chen weaves western and eastern influences into her musical compositions.

The ensemble will also perform Igor Stravinsky’s setting of T.S. Eliot’s “The dove descending breaks in the air,” which is composed as a serial or twelve-tone composition.

“The descending dove signals the entrance of the Holy Spirit into the world in order to cleanse humanity,” Murphy explained.

Tickets are $8 for adults, $6 for seniors and $3 for students and youth. For tickets or more information, call the SFA Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or visit www.finearts.sfasu.edu.