Wind Ensemble, Sage choir are highlights this week

On Saturday, May 4, Mark Davis Scatterday leads his last regular concert on campus as director of the Cornell Wind Ensemble. At the end of January, he was appointed professor of conducting and ensembles at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester and conductor of the Eastman Wind Ensemble, beginning July 1.

For his last concert in Bailey Hall, Scatterday will lead the wind ensemble in a program featuring Cornell Professor Emeritus Karel Husa's Concerto for Trumpet and Wind Orchestra as well as works by Kabelevsky, Thorne, Gillingham, Bernstein and Ginastera. Frank Campos, professor at the Ithaca College School of Music, is the soloist for the Husa concerto.

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, the 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, he has directed wind ensembles and orchestras throughout North America and Japan. Before attending Eastman, he received his bachelor's degree in music education and performance from the University of Akron (Ohio) and his master's degree in trombone performance from the University of Michigan.

Scatterday maintains an active guest conducting schedule and researches and writes on score analysis, performance practice and conducting.

In another highlight this week, the Sage Chapel Choir will perform two works Monday, May 6, at 8 p.m. in Sage Chapel: the premiere of conductor Richard Riley's Silent Thunder and Henry Purcell's Ode for St. Cecilia's Day.

Silent Thunder is inspired by the book of the same name by Katharine Payne, Cornell Lab of Ornithology research associate. The book is nominally about how elephants communicate (Payne was the first to discover that elephants communicate with sounds below the threshold of human hearing) and more about the struggle between elephants and people. In a time of diminishing habitat, to what extent should people accommodate the resource needs of wild elephants?

Riley says, "While my composition incorporates text from Silent Thunder and draws upon aural and visual images from the book, the piece is not about elephants per se, and, with the exception of the 'Abake' movement, makes no attempt to sound 'African.' In fact, the primary musical influences are Bach, Britten and Purcell, and I humbly acknowledge my debt to these three dead men, whose music lives on into the 21st century."

Soloists for Silent Thunder include guest baritones David Neal and Steven Stull and instrumentalists Cayenna Ponchione (roto toms), David Broyles (bass drum) and Christopher Morgan Loy (organ).

From 1683 until 1703, St. Cecilia's Day was regularly celebrated in London on Nov. 22. A group of music lovers, who called themselves "The Musical Society," annually selected "four persons of quality or gentlemen of note" and two musicians to prepare the following year's festival. For the celebration of 1692, Nicholas Brady was chosen as the poet and Henry Purcell the composer. The result was this Ode for St. Cecilia's Day. Vocal soloists for this 2002 performance include Sara Lozyniak, Fran Shumway, Jason Wang, Steven Stull and David Neal, with pianist Christopher Morgan Loy.

Riley's appointments at Cornell -- director of the Sage Chapel Choir and concert manager of the Cornell Concert Series -- reflect a career in music that encompasses both performance and management. A graduate of the New England Conservatory and the Peabody Conservatory, Riley came to Cornell in 1996. Beginning in 1997 and continuing for two seasons, he directed the Cornell Chorale. In August 1999 Riley assumed the directorship of Cornell's Sage Chapel Choir.