Concerts range from Afro-Cuban jazz to organ recital

Merrill

Olsen

Cornell jazz instructor and trumpeter Paul Merrill brings the seven-piece Afro-Cuban jazz ensemble Los Bandidos to Barnes Hall Saturday, Feb. 14, at 8 p.m.

Tim Collins actually started the group in Ithaca but then moved to New York City. Merrill, an original member, now heads up the Ithaca-based Los Bandidos, while Collins continues with the second Los Bandidos in New York City. For this concert, Merrill is joined by Miles Brown, from the NYC unit; Molly MacMillan, well known to Ithaca audiences; and members of the CU Jazz Ensembles.

A trumpeter, composer and educator, Merrill, the Herbert Gussman Director of Jazz Ensembles at Cornell, has been performing since the age of 10. In 1995 he won a Downbeat award for his performance with the New Jazz Ensemble directed by Rufus Reid. He toured Europe with the Grammy-nominated Phil Woods Big Band in 1998 and also has recorded as a sideman for Schanachie and I-town Records.

Merrill holds a B.M. in jazz performance from William Paterson University and M.M. in performance from Ithaca College.

Acting University Organist Timothy Olsen presents his first solo recital at Cornell Sunday afternoon, Feb. 15, at 3 p.m. in Sage Chapel.

Olsen is serving as sabbatical replacement for Associate Professor Annette Richards for the 2003-04 and 2004-05 academic years, and he opens his program with Max Reger's Introduction and Passacaglia. Following Sweelinck's Onder een linde groen, he performs two works of J.S. Bach: Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659, and Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major, BWV 552. The second half of the concert features music of César Franck and living composer Aaron Travers (b. 1974), closing with Marcel Dupré's Variations sur un noël, op. 20.

A native of Frost, Minn., Olsen was first-prize winner of the 2002 National Young Artists Competition in organ performance sponsored by the American Guild of Organists and, as such, has recorded a CD for the Naxos label, to be released this July. He began organ study at an early age and received his bachelor of music degree in 1997 from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., where he was a student of Peter Nygaard. Olsen currently is finishing his doctoral studies as a student of David Higgs at the Eastman School of Music, where he received his master of music degree in organ performance and literature in 2000, and he will complete a master of arts degree in theory pedagogy this spring.

On Sunday, Feb. 15, at 8 p.m. in Bailey Hall, the Cornell Symphony Orchestra, led by conductor John Hsu, presents an evening of music for the orchestra's string section (Elgar, Debussy and Stravinsky), and then for the wind section of the ensemble (Vaughan Williams and a premiere by Diego Vega, which Vega conducts), closing with the full orchestra playing Tchaikovsky's Overture-Fantasy, "Romeo and Juliet."

The strings open with Edward Elgar's Serenade, op. 20, followed by Danses sacrées et profanes by Claude Debussy, featuring student harpist Mary Elizabeth Sutherland. This dance, along with a second, was written in 1904 to highlight the advantages of the new "chromatic harp" developed by instrument makers Pleyel. In contrast to the traditional single set of strings, Pleyel's arpe chromatique had two rows of strings slanted across each other, one for diatonic notes (white notes on the piano), one for chromatic (black notes). Igor Stravinsky's Concerto in D, which the CSO played at President Jeffrey Lehman's inauguration, closes the first half of the concert.

Hsu then turns his attention to the wind section, beginning with Ralph Vaughan Williams' Scherzo alla Marcia. Written for an all-wind ensemble, the scherzo is actually the second movement of Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 8. The symphony as a whole often has been dubbed "the little Eighth" for its cheerful character, and at its first performance in 1956, the final notes of the Scherzo (meaning "joke' in Italian) were followed by a spontaneous burst of laughter.

Composer Vega then steps to the podium to conduct the premiere of his all-wind work, Multiple Choice, commissioned by Hsu and the Cornell Symphony Orchestra. "The title Multiple Choice came from a fellow graduate composer at Cornell, Tom Schneller," he said. "I had all four movements virtually finished but could not find a cogent title for the last. For a while I contemplated calling it Fanfare, but not even that seemed to really work, so finally I decided to simply label it 'None of the above.' When Tom saw this, he immediately suggested that I name the whole work Multiple Choice, as if the four movements were four possible answers to an imaginary question." Vega is in his final year on campus, working toward his doctor of musical arts degree in composition.

The concerts this week are free and open to the public.