The Hope College Orchestra and Hope College Wind Symphony will combine to present their final concert of the year on Wednesday, April 19, at 8 p.m. in Dimnent Memorial Chapel.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
The Orchestra will feature work by three American
composers: Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and George
Gershwin.
The first piece of the evening, composed by
Bernstein, is titled "SLAVA!," and is a political overture
written for the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich
("Slava" to his friends) to help launch his inaugural
concerts as music director of the National Symphony
Orchestra.
Next are "Saturday Night Waltz" and "Hoe-Down"
from the ballet suite "Rodeo" by Copland. The idea of the
ballet was devised by choreographer Agnes de Mille.
Third will be "Quiet City," a work for strings,
trumpet and English horn, also composed by Copland. The
piece was written in 1939 as a fantasia: a freely moving
work in which one is only vaguely aware of the solo
instruments and hears an interplay of voices. The work will
feature two student performance majors: sophomore Sarah
Herman of Sylvania, Ohio, English horn, and senior Josh
Rasdall of Hutchinson, Kan., trumpet.
The final piece is the "Rhapsody in Blue" by
Gershwin, featuring as guest artist Charles Aschbrenner of
the Hope College piano faculty.
The Wind Symphony will also perform works by
American composers.
The first, "On the Delta," is composed by William
Grant Still, the "Dean" of African-American composers.
The second, "American Guernica," is a stark and
moving piece by Adolphus Hailstork, another African-American
composer. It is a musical "response" to the bombing of the
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in the
1960s in which four girls were killed. Introducing the
piece is Dr. Kimberly Moffit, a visiting member of the
communication faculty from Howard University, who will read
an original piece by Dr. Susan Atefat Peckham, assistant
professor of English at Hope.
The next piece, a new work that has received much
acclaim in the past two years, is "Southern Harmony" by
Donald Grantham, a composer at the University of Texas. It
is a four-movement work based on hymns from the Southern
Harmony hymnal.
The final piece will be John Philip Sousa's "The
Fairest of the Fair."
Dimnent Memorial Chapel is located on the corner
of 12th Street and College Avenue.