Arkansas New Music Ensemble Explores Issues Inherent to the Human Condition
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Arkansas New Music Ensemble will continue its concert season with a performance at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26 in the Fine Arts Center’s Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall.
The program entitled Are You Experienced? features an eclectic group of musicians from the Department of Music.
The program begins with Paul Dooley’s Salt of the Earth, a piece inspired by the Detroit Salt Mine that runs beneath the Michigan city. The music captures both the industrious sounds of mining and the uncanny spirit of the now long-abandoned mines of Detroit.
Cory Mixdorf, assistant professor of trombone, is featured in the program’s next piece Taking Sides. Composed by Matthew Tommasini, Taking Sides finds inspiration in the act of debate. The solo trombonist moderates a frantic first movement with woodwind quartets rebutting and mocking on either side. The second movement reflects on the themes of the first, and finally the third movement presents a reconciliation of those themes while the ensemble begins to follow the solo trombonist’s lead.
The program concludes with Are You Experienced? by David Lang featuring Benjamin Pierce, professor of tuba and euphonium. Smacking of counterculture and a bygone era, Are You Experienced? is both a throwback to the radical style of Jimi Hendrix and a creation capable of standing on its own. The piece evokes Hendrix with psychedelic electric guitar rifts and finds a concert band counterpart in an electrically amplified tuba. At times sickeningly sweet and at others harshly bitter, Are You Experienced? confronts issues inherent to the human condition.
The concert is presented by the Department of Music in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.
Contacts
Robert Hopper, associate director of operations
Music
479-575-4100,
rghoppe@uark.edu
Headlines
PetSmart CEO J.K. Symancyk to Speak at Walton College Commencement
J.K. Symancyk is an alumnus of the Sam M. Walton College of Business and serves on the Dean’s Executive Advisory Board.
Faulkner Center, Arkansas PBS Partner to Screen Documentary 'Gospel'
The Faulkner Performing Arts Center will host a screening of Gospel, a documentary exploring the origin of Black spirituality through sermon and song, in partnership with Arkansas PBS at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 2.
UAPD Officers Mills and Edwards Honored With New Roles
Veterans of the U of A Police Department, Matt Mills has been promoted to assistant chief, and Crandall Edwards has been promoted to administrative captain.
Community Design Center's Greenway Urbanism Project Wins LIV Hospitality Design Award
"Greenway Urbanism" is one of six urban strategies proposed under the Framework Plan for Cherokee Village, a project that received funding through an Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Spring Bike Drive Refurbishes Old Bikes for New Students
All donated bikes will be given to Pedal It Forward, a local nonprofit that will refurbish your bike and return it to the U of A campus to be gifted to a student in need. Hundreds of students have already benefited.