The UCA Department of Music presents a rare program of brass music at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 18 in the Snow Fine Arts Center Recital Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. The featured work is the Hindemith “Concertmusic for Piano, Brass, and Harp, Opus 49? performed by the UCA Brass Choir under the direction of Dr. Denis W. Winter.
The piano soloist will be Dr. Norman Boehm of the Hendrix music faculty. Harpist Elisabeth Chardonnet, principal harpist with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, also is featured prominently in this symphonically proportioned composition that includes four horns, three trumpets, two trombones and a tuba.
This piece is seldom performed because of the difficulty of the piano part and the unusual instrumentation that it demands. Paul Hindemith, one the greatest composers of the 20th century, was of German heritage and immigrated to the U.S. where he eventually was appointed to the music faculty at Yale. Much of his music is neoclassical in style, and like J.S. Bach, he was a master of the contrapuntal style. That skill is wonderfully demonstrated in the ?Concertmusic for Piano, Brass, and Harp, Opus 49? as well as beautiful sections of sonorous melody.
Norman Boehm holds BM and MM degrees from the University of Michigan, and a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music. Boehm has performed in Europe and South Africa as well as in the U.S., and specializes in music from the late 19th-early 20th centuries. In addition to performing as soloist and chamber musician, he is also a composer, arranger and sometimes conductor.
Elisabeth Chardonnet graduated from the Conservatoire National Sup?rieur de Musique de Paris and spent the summer of 1997 at the Aspen Music Festival and School where she studied with Nancy Allen. She was a prize winner at the 1998 U.S.A. International Harp Contest and also the principal harpist of the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra from 1997 to 1999. ?Ang?lus,? her first solo harp CD, was released in July of 2000. She currently resides in Little Rock and works as a freelance musician and recitalist. She is the principal harpist of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and teaches both privately and at the University of Central Arkansas Community School of Music.
The program also includes brief solo performances by six outstanding student brass musicians who were chosen on the basis of their final juries last semester. Those students are: Jonathan Anthony, tuba; Ariel Marshall, euphonium; Jacob Ray, trumpet; Kristyn Smith, trumpet; Logan Smith, bass trombone; and Matt Wiggington, trumpet. Honorable mention was given to Ira Allen, trombone; Matt Smith, tuba; and Lindsey Tevebaugh, horn.
