April 11, 2003
Contact: Peter Gries (509-963-1216/fax 509-963-1239/e-mail: griesp@cwu.edu)
ELLENSBURG, Wash. - Central Washington University will
undertake one of its most ambitious music performances ever when the
music department presents the Pacific Northwest premiere of George
Crumb’s “Star-Child” on Friday, May 16, at 8 p.m. in the S. Mark Taper
Foundation Auditorium of Benaroya Hall in Seattle.
Peter Gries, CWU music department chair, sees the event as a
way to further demonstrate the quality of the department’s program.
“While we have long been known for the excellence of our
music education program, the extraordinary quality of our ensembles is
one of the best-kept musical secrets in the Northwest,” Gries says.
“This performance represents an effort to bring this into public
awareness. It’s also a way to develop scholarship resources, which
have been severely affected by the stock market downturn, as all
proceeds will be used for scholarships for next year’s music majors.”
Labeled “alarmingly complex,” the 1977 composition calls for
a large, unconventionally-arranged orchestra, a solo soprano, solo
trombone, antiphonal children’s voices, a male speaking choir, bell
ringers and four conductors to coordinate all the work’s various
elements.
One of America’s most highly regarded senior composers, Crumb
has been quoted as saying: “It is simply a work within the tradition
of music having a finale which expresses the hope that, after a
struggle, or after dark implications, there is something beyond.”
Crumb won a Pulitzer Prize for music in 1968 with “Echoes of
Time and the River.” His first major public recognition was “Ancient
Voices of Children” for soprano and chamber orchestra in 1970.
Commissioned by the Ford Foundation and first performed
publicly on May 5, 1977, Star-Child is somewhat different from Crumb’s
other works in that they are generally composed for chamber groups.
It is called an audible progression from darkness to
spiritual illumination, a process indicated by the nature of the
orchestration as well as by sung and spoken words through a 33-minute
score that is comprised of seven connected sections.
It also incorporates a collage technique in which various
sections play music, moving in a circular fashion, that is sometimes
heard, sometimes not heard, as a background over which the main musical
events take place. In fact, the score is actually composed on and
conducted from a circular music pattern.
The Benaroya Hall concert will also feature the CWU wind
ensemble performing “Harrison’s Dream,” a contemporary work by British
composer Peter Graham and two short pieces by Percy Grainger; the
chamber choir performing Ginastera’s “Lamentations of Jeremiah,” and
the orchestra presenting Leonard Bernstein’s “Dance Suite from West
Side Story.” Performances by the university’s jazz choir, jazz band,
brass ensembles and flute choir will complete the program.
Tickets are $30 general admission and will be available at
Ticketmaster outlets. For more information, or for persons of
disability to arrange for reasonable accommodation, call (509)
963-1216, or (for the hearing impaired) TDD (509) 963-2143.
