CU Wind Ensemble premieres James Matheson's Burn May 5

The Cornell University Wind Ensemble, under the direction of conductor Mark Davis Scatterday, presents a concert of works, including the world premiere of alumnus James Matheson's Burn, Saturday, May 5, at 8 p.m. in Bailey Hall.

Burn was commissioned by Scatterday and the Cornell University Wind Ensemble and was completed in January 2001. "When we 'burn' with an emotion, we experience it at its most intense, at the peak of its ability to affect us. 'burning,' with its overtones of destruction, is simultaneously life-affirming and works toward our total engagement with the world. It is this sense of intense emotional involvement which I have sought to capture in this work," Matheson said.

The program also features works of three prominent Russian composers: Dmitri Shostakovich's Festive Overture, Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dance, op. 45, no. 3, and several pieces by Sergei Prokofiev.

Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2000, Matheson received his bachelor's degree in music and philosophy from Swarthmore College in 1992 and completed his doctor of musical arts degree in December 2000 at Cornell. His music has been heard throughout the United States and abroad, including performances by Orchestra 2001 at concerts in Philadelphia and Moscow. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has premiered two of Matheson's works, Falling for piano trio and Spin for string quartet, on its chamber music series, and the American Composers Orchestra selected his work Gliss for the 2000 Whittaker New Music Reading Sessions. He also has received an ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award for his violin concerto Sleep.

Currently director of wind ensembles, professor of music and chair of the Department of Music at Cornell, Scatterday conducts the university's four wind ensembles, Festival Chamber Orchestra and Ensemble X and teaches conducting and music theory. Having received his doctorate in conducting at the Eastman School of Music in 1989, Scatterday has directed wind ensembles and orchestras throughout North America and Japan and has commissioned several new works.

A concert of French Baroque salon music performed on historical instruments will be presented Wednesday, May 9, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Violinist Wiebke Thormählen and harpsichordist Francesca Brittan, both new doctoral students this year at Cornell, have invited musicians from Europe, including violinist Helmut Riebl, cellist Joseph Crouch and soprano Sarah Eterly, to join them in presenting this evening of music. The program consists of works by Jean-Féry Rebel, François Couperin, Michel Pignolet de Monteclair, Louis-Nicolas Clérambault and Georg Philipp Telemann.