Penn State School of Music faculty members will be joined by musicians from Texas, Iowa, and Pennsylvania In a chamber music concert at 6 p.m. Aug. 11, in Esber Recital Hall on the University Park campus. This diverse group of superb performers will join together to perform "A Façade and a Fable," featuring music by British composer Wlliam Walton and the Pennsylvania premiere of a composition by American Dan Welcher. Admission is free.
The performance will open with excerpts from Walton's "Façade," a multi-movement work based on the poetry of British writer Edith Sitwell. In this unconventional composition, Sitwell's poetry is recited over Walton's instrumental music, which is scored for six players.
“The Need to See” by Dan Welcher is the result of a project funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. It was initiated by a collaboration among Penn State faculty flute professor Naomi Seidman; Melinda Brou, voice professor at Texas A&M University-Kingsville; and internationally acclaimed composer Dan Welcher, professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Welcher’s musical fable is a work that promotes acceptance and diversity and also exposes children to live music-making in a portable and suitable-for-classroom theater piece. The composition was written for the children of Kingsville, Texas, where elementary music programs have been eliminated and access to the performing arts is limited.
This bilingual (English/Spanish) piece features narrator, singer, flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, cello, percussion and audience participation. Performing musicians include Melinda Brou, narrator; Naomi Seidman, flute and piccolo; Anthony J. Costa, clarinet and bass clarinet; James Warth, saxophone and clarinet; Jonathan Dexter, cello; Dan C. Armstrong and Jason Kihle, percussion; and Dan Welcher, conductor.
Writing in "High Fidelity" in 1974, critic Royal S. Brown said "on the basis of this work (Concerto for Flute and Orchestra), I would say that Welcher is one of the most promising American composers I have ever heard." Composer-conductor Dan Welcher has been fulfilling that promise ever since, gradually creating a body of compositions in almost every imaginable genre including opera, concerto, symphony, vocal literature, piano solos, and various kinds of chamber music. With over one hundred works to his credit, Welcher is one of the most-played composers of his generation.Born in Rochester, New York, Welcher first trained as a pianist and bassoonist, earning degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. He joined the Louisville Orchestra as its principal bassoonist in 1972, and remained there until 1978, concurrently teaching composition and theory at the University of Louisville. He joined the Artist Faculty of the Aspen Music Festival in the summer of 1976, teaching bassoon and composition, and remained there for fourteen years.
He accepted a position on the faculty at the University of Texas in 1978, creating a new music ensemble and serving as assistant conductor of the Austin Symphony Orchestra from 1980 to 1990. It was in Texas that his career as a conductor began to flourish, and he has led the premieres of more than 120 new works since 1980. He now holds the Lee Hage Jamail Regents Professorship in Composition at the School of Music.
For more information regarding Dan Welcher, visit his website.