Weekend concerts feature Gamelan, classics and a CU student ensemble

The Cornell Gamelan Ensemble performs May 12. University Photography

This week the Department of Music presents three concerts, all of which are free and open to the public and are at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium.

On Friday, May 12, the Cornell Gamelan Ensemble will give a performance of Indonesian music, dance and shadow-puppetry, featuring gamelan-accompanied dances and an excerpt of a shadow-play from Java, Indonesia.

The performance features the famous Javanese Shadow Puppet Theater and Javanese dances, accompanied by a complete ensemble of gongs, drums, bronze and wood xylophones and vocalists. In the shadow theater, royal audience scenes, classical Javanese popular songs, politically incorrect clowns and wild and bloody battle scenes take place in a world of beautiful palaces, powerful kings, passionate women and controversial ogres. Sponsored by the Department of Music, the Society for Asian Music and the Southeast Asia Program, participants include three visiting Indonesian musicians as well as a Javanese dancer and a Javanese shadow-puppeteer.

On Saturday, May 13, soprano Rebecca Plack Ferguson and fortepianist Lars Haugbro present a program of works by Mozart, Schubert and Bach, as well as 17th- and 18th-century Italian composers.

Ferguson graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University and received the master of music degree in voice from the Manhattan School of Music, where she participated in classes with such artists as Elly Ameling and Will Crutchfield. She currently is pursuing a doctorate in musicology at Cornell, where she is a voice student of Judith Kellock, associate professor of music.

Ferguson has spent three summers at the Aspen Music School and Opera Theater and was awarded a full fellowship to attend the Vocal Chamber Music Program in 1992. In 1995, she was invited to perform recitals of early 19th-century German song at Aterforum, an international festival in Ferrara, Italy, dedicated to presenting young artists. Most recently, she was heard as soloist in Vaughan Williams' Mass in G Minor and Bach's "Weihnachts-Oratorium," Parts III and IV, with the Ithaca Community Chorus.

From Oslo, Norway, Haugbro made his orchestral debut with the Oslo Philharmonic in 1979 and his recital debut in 1982. That year, he also received his master of music degree from the University of Oslo. In 1984 Haugbro received the higher diploma in piano from the State Academy of Music, also in Oslo. He has given recitals in the United States, Scandinavia, Italy, France, Russia and Spain as a soloist, chamber musician and accompanist. Haugbro has recorded frequently for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corp. (NRK), including a series of major contemporary works by Norwegian composers. For the past 15 years, he has been teaching piano at two junior colleges and the State Academy of Music in Oslo. After an accident in 1989 that prevented him from using the pedals of the piano, he started to study music from the 18th century. In 1998 Haugbro began studying the fortepiano and currently is a student of Malcolm Bilson in the doctor of musical arts program at Cornell.

The final concert of the week, on Sunday, May 14, is a student ensemble recital featuring the Cornell University Brass Quintet and the Cornell University Saxophone Quartet.