April 10, 2008

Concert to feature flute, cello and piano – plus “masked players”

A concert featuring the flute, cello and piano, plus a work for “masked players,” will take place at Morningside College at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 17, in Eppley Auditorium, 3625 Garretson Ave.

The public is invited to the free event, which is sponsored by Morningside’s Academic and Cultural Arts Series (ACAS).

The concert will feature a highly unusual work in the second half – the first ever Sioux City performance of George Crumb’s “Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) for Three Masked Players,” which is written for flute, cello and piano. Martha Councell, who was an adjunct faculty member at Morningside from 2003-2007, will return to perform the difficult flute part; Joe Shufro, associate professor of music at Morningside, will play the cello; and Richard Steinbach, an internationally renowned musician who has worked with the composer, will be visiting to play the piano.

The performers will appear masked, their instruments will be electronically amplified and there will be many unorthodox playing techniques on all three instruments. Crumb has a unique capacity to invent new sounds, and he used this capacity to create a highly evocative piece.

The concert will begin with two short works for cello that will be performed by Shufro and Michele Grossman, a pianist and adjunct faculty member at Morningside. Next will be an original composition by Shufro, which is based on poems written by Jan Hodge, professor emeritus of English at Morningside College. The first half will conclude with the monumental “Sonata for Cello and Piano” by Rachmaninoff, again featuring Shufro and Grossman.