Everything Nac

Professors in Stephen F. Austin State University’s interior design program were recognized with the Best Presentation Award at the Southwest Regional Conference for Interior Design Educators Council in early October in Dallas.

IDEC is a professionally recognized association for interior design educators in North America. The organization works to advance interior design education, scholarship and service, according to the IDEC website.

SFA Professor Dr. Mitzi Perritt and Associate Professors Sally Ann Swearingen and Leisha Bridwell delivered a presentation about service learning during the conference, which hosted design educators from universities in various states such as Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas.

Last year, Perritt, Swearingen and Bridwell restructured their courses to include charrettes, intense design periods, to provide students with both an experiential- and service-learning opportunity.

“These projects demonstrate how students can use their own skills for service,” Swearingen said.

In the first charrette, SFA students worked with Love In the Name of Christ, a non-profit Christian organization, to renovate a storage building into a bathing and laundry faculty for the Nacogdoches homeless community.

This year, students partnered with the Douglass Volunteer Fire Department to plan a new fire station. Students divided into teams with a mixture of classifications, and upperclassmen served as team leaders to help guide newer students in the design process.

“This process is good for students,” Bridwell said. “It’s rewarding that we as faculty members get to be a part of projects that mean so much to the community.”

By Kasi Dickerson, senior marketing communications specialist at Stephen F. Austin State University.

The Trio Con Brio, an ensemble of musicians from the Texas Christian University music faculty, will perform a guest recital at 6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 30, in Cole Concert Hall on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University.

The trio is comprised of Dr. Misha Galaganov, viola; Gary Whitman, clarinet; and John Owings, piano. The program selections will include Sonata in F minor for Viola and Piano, Op. 120 No. 1 by Johannes Brahms; “Asking a Shadow to Dance” by James Scott Balentine; Sonata for Clarinet and Piano by Francis Poulenc; and Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, Op. 83 by Max Bruch, written for Trio Con Brio.

Trio Con Brio has presented 11 chamber music commissions in the past five years and released their debut CD, “A Musical Celebration” featuring the music of Elena Sokolovski and Eric Ewazen, on Albany Records.

The trio has toured throughout the United States and China and presented recitals and world premieres in venues such as the University of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Weill Recital Hall, New York City, and the Shanghai Concert Hall, China. Their recitals include the standard repertoire of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Max Bruch and Robert Schumann, as well as 20th century composers Leslie Bassett, Paul Walter Fürst, Gordon Jacob, Gyorgy Kurtag, Alfred Uhl and Jean Francaix.

Galaganov, associate professor of viola at TCU, has performed as a soloist in Russia, Israel, Czech Republic, Holland, Belgium, Austria, the U.S. and Mexico. His solo performance with the TCU Orchestra at the 2002 Latin American Festival was named one of the ten best performances of the year in the Dallas-Fort Worth area by the Fort Worth Star Telegram. He is co-founder and co-director of the Fort Worth Chamber Music Roundup festival, which gives amateur musicians the rare opportunity to rehearse and perform with top concert artists in the same ensembles.

Whitman, professor of clarinet and division chair of woodwinds at TCU, has performed at ClarinetFest conferences throughout the United States and Europe. He has presented master classes in Mexico City, Peru, Belgium, Puerto Rico and China. In addition to his position at TCU, Whitman is the bass clarinetist of the Fort Worth Symphony, performing in the classical subscription series “Pops” and the Fort Worth Opera Festival at Bass Performance Hall.

Chair of the piano division at TCU, Owings holds the Herndon Professorship of Music. Since making his orchestral debut with the San Antonio Symphony at the age of 15, his performing career has ranged from solo and chamber music recitals in major cities in the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia, to concerto appearances with the symphony orchestras of Cleveland, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Houston, the Boston Pops, the English Chamber Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra of both Colombia and Peru.

The concert is a joint presentation of the College of Fine Arts and School of Music and is a feature of the Calliope Concert 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.

Playwright Anne Washburn’s “Mr. Burns, a post-electric play” has something for everyone, and the Stephen F. Austin State University School of Theatre will bring the imaginative dark comedy to life as part of its 2017-18 Mainstage Series.

Described by The New York Times as “downright brilliant,” “Mr. Burns” is a show that embodies what its director, Slade Billew, loves most about the theatre.

“It has a bit of everything,” said Billew, assistant professor of acting/movement in the SFA School of Theatre. “It is funny and tragic. It includes fights, dances and songs. It is profound and hilarious. Additionally, I hope that the connections to ‘The Simpsons,’ pop culture, and a post-apocalyptic future will appeal to our student audiences.”

The play follows six people (and later seven) who have survived a nationwide nuclear power disaster. Society has collapsed, and there is no electricity. In Act One, the characters sit around a fire and try to recall an episode of “The Simpsons.” Act Two occurs seven years later. The survivors have regrouped and formed a theatre company performing old episodes of “The Simpsons.” They are seen in rehearsal where we discover more about the world they have helped remake. Act Three takes place 82 years after the initial disaster and includes a full musical performance of an episode of “The Simpsons.”

“Mr. Burns” requires the director and student actors to pay great attention to detail, Billew explained.

“The play’s complexity requires an intense level of attention to detail and coordination of all the elements of production,” he said. “The show asks so much of the cast in the movement between extremes of emotion and the physicality of all the songs and dances.”

The script has been described as providing an interesting examination of the importance of oral history and theatre. According to The New York Times, Washburn’s play “makes us appreciate anew the profound value of storytelling in and of itself… Mr. Burns…makes the case for theater as the most glorious and durable storyteller of all.”

“The play has something for everyone, and it raises interesting questions about how humans handle tragedy and the role art plays in the recovery,” Billew said.

“Mr. Burns, a post-electric play” is not appropriate for young children.

The play will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, Nov. 7 through 11, in W.M. Turner Auditorium in the Griffith Fine Arts Building, 2222 Alumni Drive, on the SFA campus.

Single tickets are $15 for adult, $10 for senior and $7.50 for student/youth. For tickets or more information, call the SFA Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or visit www.theatre.sfasu.edu.

The Texas State University Trio will present music for horn, violin and piano when the ensemble performs at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29, in Cole Concert Hall on the Stephen F. Austin State University campus.

The trio includes Texas State University School of Music faculty members Dr. Lynn Ledbetter, violin; Dr. William McNally, piano; and Dr. Caroline Steiger, horn. Their program will feature Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano by György Ligeti and Horn Trio, Op. 40 by Johannes Brahms, among other selections.

The Ligeti piece was written as a tribute to Brahms’ Trio for the same instrumentation, according to trio member Steiger.

“The work shares a similar four-movement structure and borrows from traditional formal structures,” Steiger said. “However, it employs a number of interesting techniques to create an entirely modern-sounding work.”

Composed in 1865 for the natural horn, violin and piano, the Brahms work is a staple repertoire piece for this type of chamber ensemble and has “inspired many great works to be written for the trio of horn, violin and piano,” Steiger said.

Ledbetter is professor of violin and coordinator of strings at Texas State University. She has served on the music faculties of Eastern New Mexico University, the College of Saint Scholastica, and the University of Southern Mississippi. She has performed and continues to concertize throughout the southwestern and Midwestern United States as a solo-recitalist. As a chamber musician, she has toured Canada, China, Europe, Mexico, and the United States with the Duo Paradox, the Madera Trio, the Freesia Duo and the Lyrian Duo.

Steiger is a member of the Emblems Woodwind Quintet, a Michigan-based quintet focused on performing new and underrepresented works. She has also performed with the Potsdam Brass Quintet, faculty quintet-in-residence at SUNY Potsdam. In 2015, she participated in a chamber music residency at the University of Michigan with New York Philharmonic principal winds. She is a member of the Mid-Texas Symphony and the Round Rock Symphony, and she has performed with the San Antonio Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Toledo Symphony, Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings and the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra.

In 2013, McNally released a CD of works by Brahms, Reger and Busoni as part of the Victor Elmaleh Collection. He is the first three-time winner of the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest’s New Rag Contest and performs at ragtime festivals around the country.

The concert is a presentation of the SFA College of Fine Arts and 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 Stephen F. Austin State University School of Theatre will present Christopher Durang’s full-length play “Baby with the Bathwater” at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 27, and at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Oct. 28, in the Downstage Theatre on the SFA campus.

Directed by Center senior Avery Tindol, “Baby with the Bathwater” is a dark comedy about the struggles of both parenthood and childhood. It is recommended for mature audiences.

“When John and Helen bring home their newborn baby, it doesn’t take long for them to realize that parenting isn’t that simple,” Tindol explained. “Baby eventually grows up while facing the problems that most children experience throughout their lives.” Some of these problems include being kidnapped, almost being run over by busses on multiple occasions, and identity issues.

The cast includes Frisco sophomore Aubrey Moore as Helen; Lufkin senior Jacob Carr as John; Plano senior Cecily Maucieri as the Nanny; Burleson senior Paige Farley as Cynthia/Voice/Susan; Huffman junior Sidney Lowell as Kate/Miss Pringle; Dallas senior Madison Rey as Angela/Mrs. Willoughby; and Austin freshman Zach Loveday as A Young Man.

The production staff includes Madeline Collins, Sunnyvale senior, as stage manager; Katie Irwin, Arlington sophomore, assistant stage manager; Maggie Strain, Port Aransas senior, assistant director; Victoria Medrano, Edinburg senior, and Gretchen Wedel, co-scenic designers; Ernestro Dominguez, Legget senior, costume designer; Brittany Tennis, Hutto senior, lighting designer; Wyatt Gaubatz, Needville junior, sound designer; and Davis Gilmartin, Flower Mound sophomore, properties master.

Tindol’s acting credits at SFA include the characters of Banquo in “Macbeth,” Carthage Kilbride in “By the Bog of Cats,” and Mr. Antrobus in “The Skin of Our Teeth.” His directing credits include “Things That Go Bump in the Night” and “Picnic on the Battlefield.” He will also be the assistant director for SFA’s upcoming production of (Biedermann and) “The Firebugs.”

Faculty production advisor for “Baby with the Bathwater” is Stephanie Murphy.

The Downstage Theatre is located in the Griffith Fine Arts Building, 2222 Alumni Drive.

Tickets are $6. For tickets or more information, call the SFA Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or visit theatre.sfasu.edu.

The A Cappella Choir at Stephen F. Austin State University will present a collaborative program with the SFA School of Theatre and the Dance Program to perform music from around the world in a concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26, in Cole Concert Hall on the SFA campus.

The program title, “Sing a New Song,” was selected to celebrate Dr. Michael Murphy’s first concert as the new director of choral activities at SFA. Murphy was named choral director following the retirement of Dr. Tim King this past summer.

Along with a variety of music selections from Germany, France, South Africa, Latvia, Russia and the U.S., the concert will feature poetry readings and dance, Murphy said.

Scott Shattuck, associate dean of the College of Fine Arts and professor of acting and directing, and Friends of Theatre member Rhonda Plymate Simmons will read poetry of Rumi, Hafiz, Yeats and Tagore, and students of Heather Samuelson, assistant professor, and Haley Hoss-Jameson, associate professor, Kinesiology and Health Science at SFA, will participate in concert selections with dance.

The program also features SFA string students, student percussionist Barry Martin, graduate student conductors Emily Bulling and Evelyn Shaffer, and Dr. Ron Petti, director of accompanying at SFA.

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