Throughout the spring, the Monday Concert Series will return to Leffler Chapel and Performing Arts Center with three more performances. On Feb. 17, Mar. 16, and Mar. 30, the Department of Fine and Performing Arts will host free musical performances open to the public.
The following music performances will be coming to the Leffler stage:
February 17, 2020, 7:30 p.m., Leffler Chapel and Performance Center
Richard Masters, piano
The program features the U.S. premiere performance of Arnold Bax’s imposing Piano Sonata in E-flat, composed in 1921. This work didn’t receive its public premiere until 1981 and while recordings exist, pianists have not performed it publicly.
Bax, an English composer, considered himself a cultural Irishman. He met a number of the rebels who were killed during the Easter Rising of 1916, or executed after it; the piece is intended as a memorial for them.
March 16, 2020, 7:30 p.m., Leffler Chapel and Performance Center
Voices of Women: From Unknown to Renowned featuring Heather Fetrow, soprano and Mila Henry, piano.
This enlightening performance highlights the contributions of women throughout music history in a program designed to entertain, educate and inspire. Join them for a rich and beautiful bed of song, featuring works by women and about women, all waiting to be discovered. Voices of Women: From Unknown to Renowned was released on the Affetto label and was one of Spotify’s “New Classical Albums of Note” in 2018.
March 30, 2020, 7:30 p.m., Leffler Chapel and Performance Center
Jeffrey Werbock, Azerbaijani Mugham
Jeffrey Werbock will present a program of instrumental solo improvisations based on traditional Azerbaijanimugham, played on oud – fretless wood face short neck lute; tar – fretted skin face long neck lute; and kamancha – skin face spike fiddle.
Azerbaijani mugham is monophonic modal music, highly microtonal, meter free, densely ornamented, composed of complex melodic lines that are somewhat improvised according to the eastern tradition of theme and variation, and convey a mix of sorrow and joy, exaltation and lament, and an overall sense of both antiquity and otherworldliness.
Mr. Werbock has been giving presentations for well over three decades and has performed often at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, Asia Society, World Music Institute, and presents lecture demonstrations at colleges and universities all over the English-speaking world. He has been awarded an honorary degree by the National Music Conservatory of Azerbaijan, in Baku, and was recently sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan to perform a solo concert.