Music department offers four concerts this week

The Department of Music starts off the semester with four concerts, three of which are free and open to the public.

The Cornell University Glee Club, under the direction of Scott Tucker, will give a "Post-Tour Concert" Jan. 25 at 8 p.m. in Sage Chapel. Admission is $5.

The Cayuga Winds begins its fourth season Saturday, Jan. 26, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall, with a concert featuring works by Charles Gounod and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart written for the "harmonie" or chamber wind ensemble. The concert opens with Gounod's Petite Symphonie, written in 1885, and closes with Mozart's Serenade in E-flat Major, K. 375.

Mark Davis Scatterday will conduct the Cayuga Winds Saturday, Jan. 26, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Robert Barker/University Photography

An ensemble created to bring important chamber wind music of the past 500 years to the Ithaca community, the Cayuga Winds was founded by conductor Mark Davis Scatterday in 1998 and features professional area musicians and students, primarily from the Cornell and Ithaca College campuses. Inheriting the vast history and tradition of the many superior professional and amateur wind bands in the Ithaca area, the Cayuga Winds plans to continue this wind cannon with new music commissions and premieres as part of a millennium consortium project for new music.

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, Cornell 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. He is senior editor of WindWorks, a Warner Brothers publication dealing with new compositions and transcriptions, research and performance practice for the wind band. Warner Bros. also has published his compilation and edition of 10 early instrumental works by Gabrieli, Padovano and Viadana titled Renaissance Set I as part of the Donald Hunsberger Wind Library.

Tenor Gary Moulsdale presents song cycles and opera arias in Barnes Hall on Sunday, Jan. 27, at 3 p.m., assisted by flutist Bethany Collier, oboist Anna Herforth and pianist Blaise Bryski. The concert features three Irish folk-song settings of John Corigliano with flute and piano; Ralph Vaughan Williams' cycle, Ten Blake Songs, scored for tenor and oboe; and eight songs from Leos Janácek's cycle, Diary of One Who Vanished. Interspersed throughout the program are three opera arias from Massenet's Manon, Britten's Billy Budd and Ponchielli's La Gioconda.

Moulsdale is a Ph.D. candidate in the musicology program at Cornell. Last spring he performed Schumann's Dichterliebe and a program of Jerome Kern songs here in Ithaca. At the Aspen Music School and Festival, he sang several 20th century vocal chamber works, including the Britten Nocturne and the Dominick Argento song cycles To Be Sung Upon the Water and Letters From Composers. Moulsdale also has appeared with the Ithaca Opera in The Marriage of Figaro, Amahl and the Night Visitors and El Retablo del Maese Pedro.

Bryski is finishing a doctorate in 18th century performance practice at Cornell, where he served on the piano faculty last year. He played for many years as accompanist for the UCLA Department of Music and has performed in such varied venues as the Nakamichi Baroque Festival and the Green Umbrella New Music Series. As a fortepianist, Bryski's credits include the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra Chamber Music series, the New York Concert Singers and the Aldeburgh Connection/CBC Radio.

The Susie Kelly Quartet was featured on a Cornell Contemporary Chamber Players concert in Barnes Hall last April. This young string quartet from the Eastman School of Music returns to the Barnes Hall stage, presenting its own concert Tuesday, Jan. 29, at 8 p.m. The quartet begins with the world premiere of Brad Lubman's Various Pieces for four string instruments, followed by Bongani Ndodana's Rituals for Forgotten Faces and two movements from Martin Scherzinger's Across Dancing Ground.

The second half of the program is devoted to George Crumb's Black Angels (13 Images from the Dark Land), which was conceived as a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world. The numerous quasi-programmatic allusions in the work are symbolic, although the essential polarity -- God vs. Devil -- implies more than a purely metaphysical reality. The image of the black angel was a conventional device used by early painters to symbolize the fallen angel. The underlying structure of Black Angels is a huge arch-like design that is suspended from three "threnody" pieces. The work portrays a voyage of the soul in three stages: departure (fall from grace), absence (spiritual annihilation) and return (redemption).

The Susie Kelly String Quartet initially formed with the intent of mainly playing the music of young composers and has since expanded its repertoire to include many different types of 20th and 21st century works.

Currently studying with the Ying Quartet at the Eastman School of Music, the quartet recently has performed pieces by Earl Brown, Jan Bach and African composer Bongani Ndodana. The group's desire to play new music has led them to work with several young composers in addition to such established musicians as Steven Stucky, John Adams, George Crumb and Steve Reich.

Keeping in close contact with Eastman's faculty, the quartet has performed chamber music with violinist Charles Castleman, worked with composer Martin Scherzinger and, most recently, prepared new works under the supervision of the quartet's composer, Brad Lubman. The group has been coached by members of the Guarnari, Tokyo and Colorado string quartets and was accepted to study at the 2001 Internationale Sommerakademie in Austria.

Individual interests within the group extend in many directions, including musical exploits in improvisation, Baroque performance practice, standard classical works, pedagogy and music from popular spheres.