Concert Featuring Clarinet Music of Crane Composers Will be Held on Feb. 26 at 7:30 p.m. in Sara M. Snell Music Theater
Faculty from SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music will showcase clarinet works written by living composers with ties to The Crane School of Music. This concert will be held in Sara M. Snell Music Theater on Tuesday, February 26 at 7:30 p.m.
The compositions include “Sonatina” by Music Professor Emeritus Dr. Arthur Frackenpohl, “The Old Voice of the Sea” by Dr. David Heuser, “Ragahoro Breakdown” by Dr. Gregory Wanamaker, “Black Montuno” by Dr. Ivette Herryman Rodríguez (who will join the Crane faculty in Fall 2019), and world premieres of “Warmth” by senior composition major Skye Hamilton-Carranza ’19 and “Apranihita” by Associate Professor Jerod Sommerfeldt.
The faculty bringing these compositions to life on stage at Sara M. Snell Music Theater include Dr. Julianne Kirk Doyle on clarinet, Dr. Michael Sitton on piano, Dr. Casey Grev on saxophone, Miles DeCastro on 3D printer and Jerod Sommerfeldt on electronics.
This concert is free, and the public is invited to attend.
About the Compositions:
Dr. Arthur Frackenpohl, a professor emeritus who is now 94 years old, composed “Sonatina” in 1948 while studying with Darius Milhaud at Tanglewood. The work is dedicated to American clarinetist Richard Waller who was founder and director of the Linton Chamber Music Series in Cincinnati, Ohio. This delightful three-movement work contains great wit and humor. Dr. David Heuser’s “The Old Voice of the Sea” was written during the Summer of 1993 for Steve Noffsinger. This short, slow piece has an arch-like shape, much like the grace-note runs which are its most identifiable feature. Dr. Gregory Wanamaker’s “Ragahoro Breakdown” is a virtuosic musical fantasy combining textural and modal elements of North Indian Raga with rhythmic and metric characteristics of a Bulgarian Petrunino Horo with subtle hints of American folk music. Dr. Ivette Herryman Rodríguez’s “Black Montuno” was written around the time that she graduated from Baylor University with a Master’s in Music Composition. She wrote the piece as a graduation gift for her composition professor Scott McAllister, whose black dog inspired the title of the piece, as well as her Cuban roots. Jerod Sommerfeldt’s “Apranihita” is a meditative composition that utilizes sampled sounds from a live 3D printer, clarinet, and modular synthesizer. The title “Apranihita" is the Sanskrit term for “aimlessness.” In Buddhist practice, it is used as a method for living in the present, captivated by the sensation of the moment itself, rather than one’s thoughts about it. Skye Hamilton-Carranza’s “Warmth” was written at the end of 2018 for Dr. Julianna Kirk Doyle. The piece contains a modified rounded binary, starting off with a slow, lyrical section and transitioning to a faster, lighter, more rhythmic section before returning to an altered version of the slow section.
About The Crane School of Music:
Founded in 1886, SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music has a long legacy of excellence in music education and performance. Life at Crane includes an incredible array of more than 300 recitals, lectures and concerts presented by faculty, students and guests each year. The Crane School of Music is the State University of New York’s only All-Steinway institution. For more information, please visit www.potsdam.edu/crane.
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