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05-17-05
By Mark Floyd, 541-737-0788
SOURCE: Steven Zielke, 541-737-5584
CORVALLIS - A special concert for peace featuring the debut of a commissioned song by composer Libby Larsen, combined with an art exhibit featuring drawings from children in war zones and refugee campus, is part of an evening presentation on Saturday, June 4, in Corvallis.
"Creation's Journey Toward Peace" will feature the Oregon State University Chamber Choir and is being billed as the Department of Music's inaugural President's Concert. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church (4515 S.W. West Hills Road). Tickets, priced at $5, are available at Gracewinds Music and Grassroots Bookstore in Corvallis, and the music department on campus.
 This drawing is from the exhibit "Children Behind the Wire: Art from Wartime, Camps, and Refugee Situations," which is part of the inaugural President's Concert on June 4 Click on image to go to downloadable photo |
"Libby Larsen is one of the most gifted and prominent American composers," Zielke said. "Her composition incorporates poetry from a book published by UNICEF called 'I Dream of Peace.' It is a wonderful, moving composition, and it is quite an honor for the university and the OSU Chamber Choir to present it for the first time."
The Grammy Award-winning Larsen is one of America's most performed living composers, with a catalogue of more than 220 works spanning numerous genres, including chamber music, intimate vocals, and epic orchestral and choral scores. She was commissioned by the 1978 OSU Chamber Choir to compose the work as a gift to the present Chamber Choir.
Larsen has been widely praised by artists and critics. The Wall Street Journal wrote that Larsen "has come up with a way to make contemporary opera both musically current and accessible to the average audience." USA Today hailed her as "the only English-speaking composer since Benjamin Britten who matches great verse with fine music so intelligently and expressively."
Zielke described the composition, also titled "I Dream of Peace," as dissonant yet sweet, simple yet complex.
"Larson forces us to enter the world of the children and experience their pain," Zielke said. "Through rhythm and harmony, we feel the simple, yet complex life of a child.
"Often, the percussion plays the role of the children's fear and apprehension," he explained. "Sometimes, it plays the role of gunfire or explosions. But always the children remain central, standing in front, telling their story. At the beginning, the entire choir is singing, 'I am speaking to you,' in unison.
"Later, they tenderly sing 'If I were president, boxes of candy would fall from the sky,' and at another time, 'We might be hurrying toward a grenade marked ours.'"
The choir also will perform works by Aaron Copland, Rene Clausen, Eric Whitacre, and OSU music faculty member Michael Coolen.
The corresponding art exhibit is called "Children Behind the Wire: Art from Wartime, Camps, and Refugee Situations." The drawings in the exhibit were done primarily by children, and gathered from areas where the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has worked, from central Europe, to Afghanistan and the Middle East, to Africa, Latin American and the United States.
Some of the drawings are recent; some date all the way back to World War I.
The AFSC is a Quaker organization that includes people of many different faiths working together on goals of social justice, peace and humanitarian service. The exhibit will run from May 27 to June 12 at the First Congregational Church.
A Memorial Day conversation about the exhibit, coupled with a viewing, will be hosted by the church's Just Peace Committee from 10 to 11:30 a.m. on Memorial Day.
This first President's Concert was established by the OSU Department of Music to honor OSU President Ed Ray and his wife, Beth, whose donations have funded choral music scholarships at the university.
For more information, call 541-737-4061.