UPDATE: This event has been cancelled, click here for more information.
The UMD Wind Orchestra (UMWO) goes “Classically Dope” on its season finale concert featuring rapper and hip hop artist Konshens the MC. Classically Dope is a genre fusing initiative that uses music as an instrument of positive social influence.
In this fast-paced, rigorous and celebratory program, undergraduate dance students from the UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies set new works of art into motion. Paired with faculty and graduate student mentors, dancers showcase original choreography in collaboration with student designers. These short works span multiple dance styles and are as diverse as the students themselves.
Experience the vibrant beat of samulnori. This modern incarnation of traditional Korean folk music celebrates harvest time and provides a lively soundtrack to dancing. The ensemble is comprised of four types of percussion instruments—an hourglass drum, a barrel drum, a small gong and a large gong—each representing a natural element: rain, clouds, lightning and wind, respectively.
Since its founding in 1975, hundreds of voices have joined together to share joyous music through UMD’s very own gospel choir. The group is committed to encouraging fellowship and community service.
Handel’s Ariodante is a story of royalty, love, intrigue and deceit set in the medieval Scottish highlands. Needing a male successor to the throne, the King of Scotland searches for a husband for his daughter princess Ginevra. After falling in love, Ginevra and the knight Ariodante are granted permission to wed but their plans are quickly disrupted by the devious plot of Polinesso, Duke of Albany, who also aspires to the throne.
J.S. Bach, known as the great master, wrote more than 200 cantatas, and UMD Choral Activities aims to sing them all in this series of short performances by students, faculty, staff and community friends led by conductors in the graduate program. Conducted by Kathryn Hylton, this performance will feature Leichtgesinnte Flattergeister (Light-minded frivolous spirits), BWV 181.
This concert of new music cultivates the talent of modern classical composers and inspires musicians and audience members alike. Featuring original compositions by student composers, new music concerts range from solo to chamber works and even include electroacoustic performances. Read this feature story on the new music program in The Diamondback.
Professor of cello and chamber music at East Carolina University, Emanuel Gruber will perform three of J.S. Bach’s beautiful Six Suites for Cello—No. 1, 3 and 5. Widely performed, these suites for solo cello are considered to be among Bach’s greatest works and feature movements based on dances from the Baroque period. Gruber is celebrated as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist and teacher. Awarded the Pablo Casals Prize by the Philharmonic Orchestra, he also won the Concert Artists’ Guild Auditions early in his career.
In this combined choir concert, three choral ensembles team up to offer a program of exciting variety including Polish folk songs, music of the Maori culture in New Zealand and a "bluegrass-tinged setting" of the revival hymn Unclouded Day.
The Left Bank Quartet will be joined by faculty member Larissa Dedova on piano for Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57. Written in 1940, it is one of his most-beloved chamber pieces. This will be balanced by two string quartets by Czech composers, Antonín Dvořák’s charming and lyrical 10th Quartet in E-flat Major and String Quartet No. 1 by Erwin Schulhoff. By turns hauntingly beautiful and rhythmically driving, Schulhoff’s 1924 quartet shows the influence of jazz rhythms, yet craftsmanship inspired by Dvořák—his first teacher of composition!
