Students, Symphony Orchestra give concerts this week

During the week Oct. 16-22, the Department of Music is presenting three concerts. These events, as the majority of the over 100 events presented by the department each year, are free and open to the public.

On Friday evening, Oct. 17, drummer and composer Kevin Lowe presents a student recital of original jazz compositions as well as his own arrangements of jazz standards in Barnes Hall at 8 p.m. Born and raised in Ithaca, Lowe is a junior and a religious studies major who has been involved in the jazz program at Cornell and co-hosts the weekly jazz program, "Miles Ahead," on WVBR-FM. For the Oct. 17 concert, he will be assisted by pianist Brian Kwoba, bassist Todd Schneider, trumpeter Nikola Tomic, saxophonist Jon Darvill and trombonist Alex Kahn.

John Hsu University Photography

On Saturday, Oct. 18, at 8 p.m. in Bailey Hall, the Cornell Symphony Orchestra, led by conductor John Hsu, presents an evening of symphonies in D minor, including those by César Franck and Robert Schumann. (The location for this event was changed from Ithaca College's Ford Hall to Bailey Hall, which will reopen for a few months due to delays with the renovation project.)

On the Cornell music faculty since 1955, Hsu, the Old Dominion Foundation Professor of Humanities and Music, has taught cello and courses in music theory, music history and performance, and he has conducted the Cornell Collegium Musicum, Cornell Chamber Orchestra, the Cornell Symphony Orchestra and Sage Chapel Choir. He is artistic director emeritus of the Aston Magna Foundation for Music and the Humanities, conductor of the Apollo Ensemble (a period-instrument chamber orchestra) and a world-renown player of the viola da gamba and baryton. As instrumentalist and conductor, he has recorded award-winning CDs and toured throughout this country and Europe. In May 2000, the government of France and its ministry of culture bestowed the high honor of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres on Hsu for his extensive research on the music of French composer Marin Marais.

On Sunday, Oct. 19, composer Yotam Haber presents his D.M.A. recital in Barnes Hall at 8 p.m. The program opens with Frank Campos performing Death in Venice, a work for solo trumpet. Purity Guaranteed is played by violinist Julie Methven and flutist Kim Waters. Haber's Flightline was commissioned by Annebeth Webb, a member of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, who will premiere the work in Amsterdam later this year; it will be presented by pianist Shane Levesque and violinist Julie Methven for this program.

On Sept. 18, Ensemble X premiered Haber's Blur, which was the result of his winning top prize in Ensemble X's first annual Composers' Competition. "I decided to write a piece about Gerhard Richter and me. This piece is simply about what it feels like to stand in front of two of my favorite paintings, Motorboat and Stag. Both are beautiful, quiet, controlled oil paintings, based on photographs. Both are painted in shades of gray that miraculously explode with implied colors." Blur will be performed in Barnes Hall by Richard Faria and Michael Galván, clarinets; Julie Methven and Rebecca Ansel, violins; Melissa Stucky, viola; Heidi Hoffman, cello; and Michael Fittipaldi, bass.

The program closes with soprano Judith Kellock and pianist Shane Levesque performing The Gourmand's Lament.

Born in Holland in 1976, Haber is a citizen of Israel. He currently is completing his doctorate in composition at Cornell, where he studies with Roberto Sierra and Steven Stucky. He received a B.M. with high distinction from Indiana University, studying composition with Eugene O'Brien and Claude Baker and piano with Edmund Battersby.

Haber is the recipient of a 2002 Morton Gould ASCAP Young Composer Award, and he was a composition fellow of the Aspen Music Festival and School in the summer of 2002, where he worked with Nicholas Maw and Christopher Rouse. This year, he attended the Tanglewood Music Center on a fellowship. This month, Haber will begin a residency at the Aaron Copland House near Peekskill, N.Y.