The Percussion Ensemble at Stephen F. Austin State University will welcome a guest artist when the group performs at 6 p.m. Monday, April 18, in Cole Concert Hall on the SFA campus.
Dr. Josh Armstrong, assistant professor of percussion and assistant director of bands at Delta State University, will perform on Ivan Trevino’s piece, “Flow,” which features a soloist who alternates between snare drum and marimba, accompanied by percussion trio, according to Dr. Brad Meyer, director of percussion studies for the SFA School of Music.
Armstrong has performed at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention and the National Conference on Percussion Pedagogy, and he has appeared as a guest artist at multiple universities around the country. He has performed with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony, North Mississippi Symphony, Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra, Lubbock Symphony Orchestra and Midland Symphony. He has appeared at numerous Days of Percussion including in Arizona, Iowa and Mississippi. He has also been a guest soloist with the Waterloo Municipal Band.
The Percussion Ensemble will also premiere Elliot Cole’s “Amen,” which is a slow-motion walk through the “Amen Break,” a seven-second clip from a funk song from 1969 by The Winstons, Cole explains.
“It has been called the most influential seven seconds in music,” the composer said. “DJs have used it as the drum break in innumerable tracks, spawning whole genres of dance music where it is an essential element.”
Also on the program is the piece “Signals Intelligence,” which “explores the experience of hearing an electronic transmission in which order is clearly audible, but the information density is too high for any human to parse,” Meyer explains.
“The experience is one of being made aware of that which is always just out of reach, just beyond comprehension,” he said.
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.
