The influence of Rider University’s Westminster College of the Arts will be felt here, there, and everywhere over the course of the coming week.
Westminster Choir College will present its annual art song festival tonight and tomorrow. This year’s overarching theme will be “Songs of Fin-de-Siècle Paris and Vienna.” Lecture recitals will begin at 7:30 p.m. at Bristol Chapel on the college’s Princeton campus.
Repertoire will include works composed between 1885 and 1915 by Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, Ernest Chausson, Hugo Wolf, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg and Alexander Zemlinsky.
A free symposium will be held there tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Westminster Choir College students will perform early songs of Webern.
Also on Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and also free, Westminster Conservatory of Music faculty members will present a concert of French woodwind repertoire as part of the institution’s “Kaleidoscope Chamber Series.” The program, titled “Le Conservatoire: The Paris Conservatory and Its Impact on Wind Performance,” will take place at Gill Memorial Chapel on the Rider University campus in Lawrenceville.
On Sunday at 3 p.m., Westminster Conservatory will provide a showcase of its community ensembles and students at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. Participants will include the Westminster Community Orchestra and the Princeton Charter School/Westminster Conservatory Youth Orchestra, both conducted by Ruth Ochs; the Westminster Conservatory Children’s Chorus, conducted by Patricia Thel and Yvonne Macdonald; and winners of the Westminster Conservatory Concerto Competition: Marie Louise James, oboe; Alexis Peart, soprano; and Matthew Yuan, clarinet.
Finally, Westminster Choir will join the Westminster Festival Orchestra for a concert of Beethoven choral masterworks on March 4 at 8p.m. Joe Miller, Westminster Choir College’s director of choral activities, will conduct the Mass in C Major, and Drew Petersen will be the soloist in the popular “Choral Fantasy” for piano, chorus and orchestra. The program, titled “Romantic Genius,” will be performed at Princeton Meadow Church and Event Center.
Find out details in my article in today’s Trenton Times. Go, Westminster!
http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/02/classical_music_westminster_ch_1.html
PHOTOS: Westminster Conservatory competition winners (clockwise from left) Marie Louise James, Alexis Peart, and Matthew Yuan
