Everything Nac

    The SFA Brass Quintet will present a recital of varied works at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 6, in Christ Episcopal Church as part of the Stephen F. Austin State University School of Music’s Cole Performing Arts Series.

The SFA Brass Quintet will present a recital at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 6, in Christ Episcopal Church. The members are (from left), Assistant Professor J.D. Salas, Associate Professor Deb Scott, Associate Professor Gary Wurtz, Professor Charles Gavin and graduate student Cody Sturdivant.

    The quintet is composed of faculty members Gary Wurtz (trumpet), Charles Gavin (horn), Deb Scott (trombone), and J.D. Salas (tuba), plus Mexia graduate student Cody Sturdivant (trumpet).

    The program includes J.S. Bach’s “Contrapunctus IX from the Art of the Fugue,” transcribed by Arthur Frackenpohl and as played by the Canadian Brass, said Scott.

    “We’ll also be playing Clint Needham’s ‘Brass Quintet No. 1 (Circus),’ a fun piece featuring five movements about different circus subjects such as clowns and a contortionist, and an arrangement of one of Dave Brubeck’s most famous jazz compositions, ‘Blue Rondo a La Turk,’” Scott continued.

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

    Tickets, which may be purchased in advance or at the door, are $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and $2 for students. For tickets or more information, please go to www.finearts.sfasu.edu or call (936) 468-6407 or (888) 240-ARTS.

    Christ Episcopal Church is located at 502 E. Starr Ave.

    Members of the Stephen F. Austin State University and Baylor University music faculties will present music by Franz Schmidt at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 5, in Cole Concert Hall on the SFA campus.

    Violinist Jennifer Dalmas, cellist Evgeni Raychev and clarinetist Christopher Ayer, all of SFA, will collaborate with Baylor violist Kathy Steely and pianist Kae Hosoda-Ayer in presenting Schmidt’s two quintets for which the pianist uses only the left hand.

    The composer wrote the pieces at the request of Paul Wittgenstein, a fellow Austrian who lost his right arm in World War I but continued to pursue his career as a concert pianist and eventually settled in the United States.

    “The quintets are quite complex and challenging, especially for the pianist!” said Ayer. “We’re really enjoying working on them.”

    The recital is part of the SFA School of Music’s 2011-2012 Cole Performing Arts Series.

    Cole Concert Hall is located in the Wright Music Building, 2210 Alumni Drive.

    Tickets are $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and $2 for students. For tickets or more information, please call (936) 468-6407.

    Mark E. Turner, associate professor of elementary music education for Stephen F. Austin State University, will deliver a lecture, “Artistic and Intellectual Character: What it is, why it matters, and how to get it,” from 2 to 3 p.m. Friday, Nov. 4, in the Music Recital Hall (Room 160) of the Wright Music Building.

    The lecture will present ideas from Project Zero, a research group from the Harvard Graduate School of Education that has been investigating the development of learning processes in children, adults and organizations since 1967.

    The researchers have found that people do not always employ the skills, strategies or ways of thinking they have learned, Turner explained. “My topic will focus on developing students’ dispositions to do so,” Turner continued.

    As part of the lecture, Scott Harris, SFA associate professor of percussion, will join Turner for an oral presentation of a fable. As Turner reads, Harris will improvise on percussion instruments.

    The talk is the third of the monthly Robert G. Sidnell Lecture Series in Music Education established by Turner and named for a former dean of the SFA College of Fine Arts.

    Admission is free. The Wright Music Building is located at 2210 Alumni Dr. For more information, please call Turner at (936) 468-4051.

    As part of its monthly independent film series, the Stephen F. Austin State University College of Fine Arts and School of Art will present a free, one-night screening of “Herb and Dorothy” at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 4, at The Cole Art Center @ The Old Opera House in downtown Nacogdoches.

    Megumi Sasaki’s 2009 film focuses on Herbert and Dorothy Vogel, who managed to amass one of the most important collections of contemporary art in history with very modest means.

    In the early 1960s, the couple began living on Dorothy’s librarian salary while using Herb’s postal worker salary to purchase art they liked, was affordable and was small enough to fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. After 30 years, they had literally filled the space with over 2,000 pieces, most by artists such as Sol LeWitt, Christo, Jeanne-Claude and Lawrence Weiner, who had become world renowned.

    In 1992, the Vogels donated their entire collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and began refilling their apartment with new art.

    “Herb and Dorothy” received both the Golden Starfish Award for the Best Documentary Film and the Audience Award from the 2008 Hamptons International Film Festival. It also received Audience Awards from the 2008 Silverdocs Film Festival and the 2009 Philadelphia Cinefest.

    The Cole Art Center is located at 329 E. Main St. Admission is free.

    The film is sponsored in part by SFA Friends of the Visual Arts and Nacogdoches Junior Forum. For more information, please call (936) 468-1131.

    The Percussion Ensemble at Stephen F. Austin State University will showcase a broad spectrum of sound during its annual fall concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, in Cole Concert Hall on the SFA campus.

The SFA Percussion Ensemble will present its annual fall concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, in Cole Concert Hall, located in the Wright Music Building, 2210 Alumni Drive.

    The concert will open with an energetic drum and cymbal work by Bruce Hamilton and Ney Rosauro’s “Concerto for Vibraphone and Percussion Ensemble,” featuring Dayton senior Jon Gaedchens.

    The ensemble’s 12 members will close the first half with Phillip Mikula’s “To Those Who Are Brave,” which employs “almost every percussion instrument SFA owns!” exclaimed director Scott Harris, SFA associate professor of percussion.

    The second half of the program showcases works of a more contemporary or popular nature, Harris continued. “Alexander Lepak’s ‘Crescendo’ is literally a huge crescendo beginning with the softest fingers on a solo conga and ending with the full ensemble playing as loud as possible, and Ernst Toch’s ‘Geographical Fugue’ uses only spoken text.”

    Mansfield junior Melanie Settle will be the featured xylophone soloist on George Hamilton Green’s ragtime work “Fluffy Ruffles,” and Arthur Lipner’s calypso tune “City Soca” makes use of Latin percussion instruments, steel drums and marimbas.

    Tickets are $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and $2 for students. For tickets or more information, please go to www.finearts.sfasu.edu or call (936) 468-6407 or (888) 240-ARTS.

    The Choral Union and Women’s Choir of Stephen F. Austin State University will present a joint concert, “Impressions,” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 1, in Cole Concert Hall on the SFA campus.

    Both choirs will be performing secular and sacred songs that explore the themes of living, loss, and love as experienced through the senses, said Dr. David Howard, SFA associate director of choirs and the ensembles’ director.

    The Choral Union will open the concert with two Italian madrigals by Salamone Rossi. Tenor Joseph Dennis, McKinney senior, will then join the choir in singing Leos Janácek’s “Elegie na smrt dcery olgy (Elegy on the death of my daughter, Olga)” and Claude Debussy’s “Trois Chansons de Charles d’Orléans,” a setting of three poems by the poet-prince Charles d’Orléans.

    The Women’s Choir will perform Baldassare Galuppi’s “Dixit Dominus (Psalm 110), followed by two song cycles of poems. René Bernier’s “Sortlèges ingés (Ingenuous Spells)” is a grouping of seven songs set to poems by Maurice Carême, and Gwyneth Walker’s “Songs for Women’s Voices” are set to poems by Anna “May” Swenson.

    The Choral Union is an auditioned 70-voice mixed choir composed of music and non-music majors. Dr. Geneva Fung serves as the group’s accompanist. Portugal graduate student Bruno Ribeiro accompanies the 25-voice Women’s Choir.

    Cole Concert Hall is located in the Wright Music Building, 2210 Alumni Drive.

    Tickets are $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and $2 for students. For tickets or more information, please go to www.finearts.sfasu.edu or call (936) 468-6407 or (888) 240-ARTS.