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Dr. Tim King, professor of music and director of choral activities at Stephen F. Austin State University, will present “SFA: A Scale for Fine Arts” at the upcoming Regents Lecture.

King, the 2014-15 Regents Professor, will deliver the address at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 5, in the Cole Concert Hall on the SFA campus. Refreshments will be served, and there is no admission charge.

Reserved for exemplary university role models, the title of Regents Professor is the highest honor SFA bestows upon members of the faculty and is held for one academic year.

King’s address will focus on his 40-plus years as a teacher, including his personal reflections on the subjective and often-time opinionated topic of what makes art and how artistic decision-making affects the modern performer, conductor and teacher.

An SFA faculty member since 1983, King earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from Texas Tech University in 1974 and 1979 and his doctoral degree from the University of Illinois in 1993.

This is the 10th in a series of lectures delivered by SFA Regents Professors.

The series is sponsored by the SFA Office of the Provost and the University Lecture Series Committee. For more information, call (936) 468-2605.

The Stephen F. Austin State University Alumni Association recently established the Auren and Alma Smith Memorial Scholarship to support undergraduate students attending the university.

This scholarship was endowed in loving memory of the couple by their daughter, Janyce Smith Brannon. Brannon, a 1957 and 1959 SFA graduate, is a retired CPA residing in Dallas.

The Auren and Alma Smith Memorial Scholarship will be awarded to currently enrolled students with an established major, and recipients must maintain at least a 3.0 grade-point average.

Anyone wishing to donate to the scholarship may send a check payable to the SFASU Foundation with instructions to apply the gift to the Auren and Alma Smith Memorial Scholarship. Donations should be mailed to P.O. BOX 6096, SFA Station, Nacogdoches, TX 75962.

“Cornelius Gurlitt and the Art Treasures Confiscated by the Nazis” will be the topic of a lecture Dr. Christoph Zuschlag will present at 5 p.m. Tuesday, March 3, in Room 106 of the Art Annex on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University.

Zuschlag, professor of art history at the Landau campus of the University of Klobenz/Landau, Germany, is instrumental in the on-going student exchange between his university and SFA, according to Jill Carrington, professor of art history at SFA.

One of Zuschlag’s interests is stolen art, such as the masterworks that were denounced by the Nazis as “degenerate art” yet also “collected” by the Nazis, meaning the works were typically stolen from the rightful owners, who, often being Jewish, became victims of the Holocaust.

Stolen art is not only the topic of a major book publication by Zuschlag, but remains a timely topic. The announcement of the discovery of a huge stash of such stolen art in the Munich apartment and Salzburg home of an apparently inconspicuous art collector, Cornelius Gurlitt, made headlines in 2013 and 2014. Gurlitt’s father was the art historian and dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, who collected art in the 1930s and 1940s and worked for the Nazi government to sell stolen works.

Among the artists whose works were discovered in this find were Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas Camille Pissarro, and many others.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Carrington at (936) 468-4351.

The Memphis Woodwind Trio, comprised of the flute, clarinet and oboe faculty from the University of Memphis School of Music, will perform a concert of intimate chamber music for winds at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 3, in Cole Concert Hall on the Stephen F. Austin State University campus.

Works will range from the serious, such as Thea Musgrave’s “Impromptu” for flute and oboe, to the sublime – an Antonin Dvorak string trio, re-imagined. The program will also feature works by J.S. Bach, H. Villa-Lobos, Malcolm Arnold and Leonardo de Lorenzo.

The recital is a joint presentation of the SFA College of Fine Arts and School of Music and is a feature of the Cole Performing Arts Series.

The trio is comprised of Elise Blatchford, flute; Michelle Vigneau, oboe; and Robyn Jones, clarinet.

Jones is currently assistant professor of clarinet at the University of Memphis, Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music. Since arriving in Memphis in the fall of 2012, she has performed with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and the Memphis Woodwind Quintet and as principal clarinet with the Jackson Symphony Orchestra. She has performed with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.

Blatchford, assistant professor of flute, is also a member of the City of Tomorrow, a contemporary music-focused wind quintet that took first place at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition in 2011. She has traveled to Latin America and the Caribbean to coach chamber musicians and flutists and has given master classes at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Williams College, the University of Western Michigan and Willamette University, among others.

Vigneau, associate professor of oboe, has taught at Colby College, Bates College, the Portland Conservatory of Music, the University of Cape Town, and the University of Mary Hardin Baylor. She has performed with orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States and Mexico and spent three years playing in the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra.

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.

Uncommon combinations of instruments and a wide variety of musical styles will be explored during a Cole Performing Arts Series concert at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 4, in Cole Concert Hall on the Stephen F. Austin State University campus.

“Coleidoscope” is a series of chamber music collaborative faculty concerts honoring the SFA School of Music’s “invaluable patrons,” Ed Cole and the late Gwen Cole, according to Evgeni Raychev, cellist and SFA music faculty member.

“In fact, this concert could be regarded as a symbolic gesture of gratitude to the general music patrons in our area,” he said.

The first half of the concert will feature harp music performed by SFA music instructor Emily Mitchell. Along with Raychev and Mitchell, other faculty members who are collaborating in the musical evening are Jennifer Dalmas, violin; Chris Ayer, clarinet; Christina Guenther-Scott, flute; Geneva Fung, piano; and Melissa Nabb, viola.

The program will feature the music of composers Marcel Tournier, Arvo Pärt, Arthur Foote, Sergei Prokofiev and Darius Milhaud.

The concert will conclude with Prokofiev’s composition “Overture on Hebrew Themes” written for clarinet, piano and string quartet.

“This piece is based on Jewish folk music that has a paradoxically happy-yet-tragic and festive quality that many, including Dmitry Shostakovich, found very powerful,” Raychev said.

The concert is a joint presentation of the SFA College of Fine Arts and School of Music. Cole Concert Hall is located in the Tom and Peggy Wright Music Building, 2210
Alumni Drive.

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