Music department presents last five concerts of the semester

04/25/08 - The University of Rhode Island's Department of Music will be ending the concert season this weekend with five shows, running today through Tuesday at the Fine Arts Center.Musical acts range in style from Mozart to Celtic hymns.

Scheduled for this evening, the URI Concert Band will be performing a completely original piece entitled Genesis, a representation of the Biblical creation story.

"The play has lots of themes that represent certain characters, Adam and Eve, Cain and Able, Lucifer," said Brian Cardany, conductor for Friday's performance. "There's sort of a voice of God thing at the very beginning, starting from the void, and then comes the big bang."

The piece was composed by URI graduate and drum line instructor for the URI marching band Tim Girard. The band and Cardany have been practicing it since mid-March.

Other works being performed for tomorrow night's show include "Fantasy on a Japanese Folk Song" by Samuel Hazo, a piece that conveys the problems of a Japanese wife who longs for the traditions and culture of her homeland while still trying to love her American husband.

Then it's "Celtic Hymns and Dances," by Eric Ewazen, a medieval-inspired piece. Also on the agenda is "Pageant" by Juilliard School of Music veteran Vincent Persichetti, and "On An American Spiritual," composed by David Holsinger.

Finally, adapted from the Spielberg comedy starring John Belushi, is"1941." The band will play the "March Theme," written by John Williams. The show starts at 8 p.m.

On Saturday at 8 p.m. the URI Undergraduate Honors String Quartet will be performing two pieces, Felix Mendelssohn's "String Quartet No. 2 in d major" and Wolfgang Mozart's "String Quartet No. 2 in d minor." Lydia Lis, North Kingstown resident and senior performance major at URI, will be playing violin on both pieces.

"Each piece of music definitely has a different feeling," Lis said. "For me it's more of an emotional thing, a feeling I get when I play it, but I couldn't tell you what it was."

Lis has been playing the violin for 16 years, and her current teacher, Professor of Music at URI John Dempsey, has been working with her since she was 12. She said that it was a major help and honor to have such a familiar and amazing teacher throughout her college career.

This will be her last performance with the group, as she is graduating next month.

Other members of the quartet include violinist Sara Dillon, a junior music education major from Cranston, violist Naseer Ashraf, a senior composition major from Wakefield, and Chelsea Bernstein, a sophomore performance major from Newport.

On Sunday the URI Symphonic Wind Ensemble will present their spring concert along with the South Kingstown High School at 3 p.m.

URI's ensemble, which was formed from a rigorous and selective process of auditions, will open their portion of the concert with Shelley Hanson's "Return to the Mountain", which is based on the folk music of Incan descendants living in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. J.S. Bach's "Fugue A La Gigue" and Alfred Reed's "Rahoon" will also be performed, with Reed's piece accompanied by a three-stanza poem dedicated to a lost lover entitled "She Weeps Over Rahoon," written by Irish writer James Joyce.

Finally, the URI Percussion Ensemble will be performing on Monday at 7:30 p.m. in the URI Fine Arts Concert Hall.

Also, the small a capella choral ensemble, Lively Experiment, will be performing on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in room C100 of the Fine Arts Center.