Cultivating the talent of modern classical composers and bringing new music to the stage inspires musicians and audience members alike. This evening of original compositions by UMD student composers features solo, chamber and electroacoustic performances.
UMRO explores the depths of music as a form of activism, resistance, and healing in this engaging program featuring guest conductors across UMD's graduate conducting programs.
Program:
Beethoven's Overture to Fidelio, Op. 72
Sibelius' Karelia Overture, Op. 10
Shostakovich's Symphony for Strings, Op. 110
Mahler's Symphony No. 3
This toe-tapping concert really swings! You won't want to miss the UMD Jazz Ensemble, the UMD Jazz Lab Band and the University Jazz Band in innovative interpretations of classic and contemporary jazz works.
Stuart Saunders Smith's work "The Xylophone Poems for Xylophonist, Actor, Singer" is a concert-length work for single solo performer on xylophone who speaks, sings and acts all while playing the xylophone. Originally composed in 1999, Dr. Smith expanded the work into an concert-length work in 2017 for faculty percussionist Dr. Lee Hinkle. The performance in 2019 would constitute the world-premiere performance of this work especially written for Dr. Hinkle. The Xylophone Poems are an opera for xylophone in twenty-one scenes.
The UMD Wind Ensemble, UMD Wind Orchestra and UMD Men’s Chorus share the stage for an exciting performance of Weill works written in Berlin during the Weimar Era.
Program:
Das Berliner Requiem
Mike Hogue, tenor
Collin Power, baritone
Aaron Peisner, conductor
Vom Tod im Wald
Kevin Short, bass-baritone
Edward Maclary, conductor
Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra, Op. 12
Irina Muresanu, violin
Edward Maclary, conductor
Ravi Coltrane is more than the scion of spiritual jazz’s first family. The son of saxophone bellwether John Coltrane and fusion paragon Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, Ravi was not yet two when his father died. Still, in the subsequent five decades, he has inherited and cherished the call to push jazz ahead, honoring and preserving its past while ever aiming for its next step. In the early 1990s, he began playing with a murders’ row of genre titans, like his father’s longtime drummer Elvin Jones, and restless minds, like progressive jazz force Steve Coleman.
Hamlet is knee-deep in a personal and political quagmire. His father, the king, has been murdered by his uncle Claudius, who has hastily married his sister-in-law to assume the throne. Seeking to avenge his father’s murder, Hamlet sets off a chain of events resulting in death, destruction and a notable absence of justice.
Elisabeth Mehl Greene's new opera Hajar synthesizes the Jewish and Islamic stories of Hagar/Hajar into a modern tale of a Syrian refugee mother and her son trying to reach safety in America. Hajar confronts the immigration crisis in the United States and worldwide, challenging the acceptance of policies that resist compassion.
Strata, an ensemble including violin faculty member James Stern and guest artists Audrey Andrist, piano, and Nathan Williams, clarinet, presents a dazzling recital of music by contemporary American composers.
Selections include the title work by Dana Wilson (inspired by the poem As I Grew Older by Langston Hughes), and music by Paul Schoenfield, Libby Larsen, Margaret Brouwer, and a work written for Strata by celebrated Maryland alumnus Jonathan Leshnoff.
