Everything Nac

Dr. Chris Turner, assistant professor of voice at Stephen F. Austin State University, will present a faculty recital at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 8, in the Music Recital Hall in the Wright Music Building on the SFA campus.

Turner, a baritone, will perform the music of George Friedrich Handel, Johannes Brahms, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Henri Duparc and Aaron Copland.

A native of Pascagoula, Mississippi, Turner received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in church music and vocal performance, double majoring at the undergraduate level, from Mississippi College in Clinton, Mississippi. He served as minister of music at several prominent churches for 20-plus years, including First Baptist, Natchez, Mississippi, and First Baptist, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. While in Baton Rouge, he began doctoral studies at Louisiana State University under the guidance of Robert Grayson, formerly a tenor at the New York City opera, graduating with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in voice performance and a minor in vocal pedagogy. Turner did post-doctoral study in vocal pedagogy at the Eastman School of Music.

Among his performance experience in opera and musical theater is the role of Count Almaviva in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” the music of which is featured in this recital program. He will also perform portions of Handel’s “Messiah.”

The recital is a joint presentation of the SFA College of Fine Arts and School of Music. Admission is free. For more information, call the SFA Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or visit www.finearts.sfasu.edu.

The A Cappella Choir at Stephen F. Austin State University will present “A Fauré Feast” when the ensemble performs a concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 10, in Cole Concert Hall on the SFA campus.

Featuring the music of French composer Gabriel Fauré, the program will also showcase as soloists SFA music faculty members Debbie Berry, soprano; Jennifer Dalmas, violin; Charlotte Davis, soprano; Scott LaGraff, baritone; Ron Petti, piano; and Evgeni Raychev, cello. An orchestra comprised of university faculty and graduate students will accompany the performance.

Fauré’s works to be performed include Requiem in d, “Cantique de Jean Racine,” “Tarantelle” and “Élégie.”

A Cappella Choir Director Dr. Tim King, Regents Professor and director of choral activities at SFA, described Fauré (1845-1924) as “the foremost composer of his generation.” His greatest and most well-known choral work, Requiem in d, has several editions and orchestrations.

“The original orchestration, which will be presented on the concert, is scored for viola, cello, bass, organ and brass,” King explained. “Interestingly, it is without violins except for a beautiful violin solo in the ‘Sanctus.'”

Fauré wrote of the work, “Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.”

“I am indebted to my SFA School of Music colleagues who are willing to give of their time and talent to present this glorious work,” King said.

The concert is a joint presentation of the SFA College of Fine Arts and the School of Music.

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 exhibition “Kent Rush: Photo-Syntax” will close Thursday, March 10, in Griffith Gallery on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University with a talk by the artist, followed by a reception.

Rush will give a gallery talk at the closing reception from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in Griffith Gallery, which is located in the Griffith Fine Arts Building, 2222 Alumni Drive.

Black and white photographs, drawings and prints are featured in the exhibition, which was curated by Neal Cox, faculty member in the SFA School of Art. Rush’s work has been exhibited extensively in the United States in solo, two- and three-person shows and group and competitive shows. Internationally, he has also shown in London, Brazil, Peru, Mexico and France.

His exhibition at SFA opened Jan. 20.

For more information, call (936) 468-1131.

The Stephen F. Austin State University College of Fine Arts and School of Music will present the Silver Keys Trio in a recital at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 9, in Cole Concert Hall on the SFA campus.

The trio includes School of Music faculty Dr. Christina Guenther, flute, and Dr. Geneva Fung, piano, along with bassoonist Dr. Susan Nelson, a former SFA faculty member who is now assistant professor of bassoon at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Working together at SFA from 2010-2012 led to a fast friendship and many musical collaborations among these musicians, and the trio has been performing together ever since, according to trio member Guenther.

The upcoming program will feature “I Might Speak” by Kyle Hovatter, Trio for Flute, Bassoon and Piano by Michael Schachter and “Mountain Roads” by Chelsea Williamson.

The Silver Keys Trio commissioned Hovatter to compose for the trio’s instrumentation at a time when the composer and his wife had just begun to expect a new daughter.

“I swung between exhaustive fragility and terrifying elation and still do with Alice now here and born,” Hovatter said. “The text that makes up the movement titles has become my much needed mantra, as anything I do, from parenting to music, is destined to fail without love. My deepest thanks go to the virtuosic Silver Keys Trio for organizing the commissioning consortium that brought about this seven-movement piece.”

Schachter’s music draws from “an eclectic brew of influences including jazz and New Orleans, Renaissance polyphony, Jewish liturgy and klezmer, and South Indian classical music,” Guenther explains. Trio for Flute, Bassoon and Piano was commissioned by the Aurea Silva Trio for their Midwestern performance circuit in 2014 and for inclusion on their forthcoming studio release.

“The piece is a sort of study in threes; three instruments, three movements, each movement featuring one instrument as a soloist, and so forth,” Schachter said of the work. “The first movement is a sort of macabre waltz, like the French fin-de-siecle had been decomposing in decadence all this time. The second movement is a somber dirge, and it features one of my favorite tunes I’ve written. The final movement is a delicate, precise whirling dervish, like fine clockwork at warp speed.”

“Mountain Roads” is Williamson’s three-movement musical picture of “the beautiful and awe-inspiring roads winding through the mountains of Colorado,” she said.

The concert is part of the School of Music’s Cole Performing Arts Series. 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.