Crane School of Music Professor John Ellis, trumpet, will perform in a faculty recital along with colleagues and a guest artist on March 11.
Crane School of Music Professor Dr. John Ellis will be joined by colleagues for an evening of chamber music for trumpet and various instruments on Sunday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m., in the Sara M. Snell Music Theater.
Ellis will be joined by guest artist Maxwell Grube (bassoon), as well as fellow Crane School of Music faculty members Julie Miller (piano), Liesl Doty (violin), Marie-Elaine Gagnon (cello), Casey Grev (saxophone) and Julianne Kirk-Doyle (clarinet). The program will include several works that have never before been heard in the North Country.
The concert will open with “Scherzo” by Ilia Emmanuilovich Shakhov, followed by Paul Hindemith’s “Concerto for Trumpet, Bassoon and Strings.” The Hindemith concerto has been praised for its “Bachian” elements, youthful spirit and a romantic quality unusual for the composer.
The group will also present the original instrumentation of Aaron Copland’s “Quiet City,” the first performance of this work in Potsdam. Copland’s orchestral arrangement of the piece for trumpet, English horn and strings is well known, but the composer originally wrote much of that material as incidental music for a 1939 play by Irwin Shaw. The play was a flop, and Copland’s original score for trumpet, saxophone, clarinet and piano was never published. It was only recently unearthed and published by saxophonist Christopher Brellochs.
Bohuslav Martinu wrote the jazz ballet, “La Revue de Cuisine” in 1927. In the ballet, the dancers play a variety of cooking utensils which swagger their way through kitchen life. The artists will present this suite, written for trumpet, piano, clarinet, bassoon, violin and cello, which was drawn from the ballet and was heavily influenced by the jazz styles of the late 1920s.
The performance will close with Leonard Bernstein’s “Rondo for Lifey,” one of five brass pieces the composer wrote dedicated to dogs. In this case, the playful work was inspired by a Skye terrier owned by Bernstein’s friend Judy Holliday.
This concert is free, and the public is invited to attend.
This concert will be broadcast live on the Crane School of Music YouTube channel at the performance time. To view the program and see other upcoming streaming performances, visit www.potsdam.edu/academics/Crane/streaming.
For more information about SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music, please visit www.potsdam.edu/crane.
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.
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