KSC Guitar Orchestra and Percussion Ensemble Play With a Brazilian Flair
KEENE, N.H., 10/23/08 - The KSC Guitar Orchestra and Percussion Ensemble will perform Brazilian and European music on Wednesday, November 12, at 7:30 p.m. in the Alumni Recital Hall of the Redfern Arts Center on Brickyard Pond. Admission is $10 for the general public and $5 for KSC students, senior citizens, and youth ages 17 and younger. For tickets, call the box office at 603-358-2168.
The KSC Guitar Orchestra, consisting of nine guitars directed by José Lezcano will play a variety of pieces including Gabriel Fauré’s Pavane; Suite Espanola by Gaspar Sanz, a guitarist and composer at the Spanish Royal Court; El Noi de la Mare, a Catalonian folk song arranged for guitars; and Railaway, a work for six guitars inspired by trains, by Dutch composer Annette Kruisbrink.
The KSC Percussion Ensemble, directed by Christopher Swist, will feature music from, or influenced by, Brazil. Instruments such as the berimbau, pandeiro, tamborim, ago-go, ganza, and cuica will be used in traditional arrangements. Works by Michael Colgrass, Ney Rosauro, and KSC’s own professor emeritus William Pardus will be performed.
Lezcano, a Cuban-born guitarist, composer, educator, and folklorist, has presented programs of traditional and South American guitar repertory and Andean music and his own solo, concerto, and chamber works at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York City’s North-South Consonance Series, and major venues and festivals in Ecuador, Columbia, Peru, Brazil, China, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
Lezcano has earned numerous awards, including first prize in the MTNA National Guitar Competition, the NH State Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, NHMTA Composer of the Year (2002 and 2007), KSC Distinguished Research Award, and a Fulbright Award to Ecuador. He has been teaching guitar, music theory, and Latin American Music at Keene State since 1991.
Pardus is professor emeritus of music and former chairman of the Music Department at Keene State, where he taught arranging, American music, and jazz history and was director of the KSC Electronic Music Studio and KSC Jazz Ensemble. He has been involved with music technology, presenting workshops and seminars at state, regional, and national conferences of music educators, and at other colleges and universities. He was selected by the New Hampshire Music Teachers’ Association as the 2001, 2004, and 2008 NHMTA Commissioned Composer.
Swist is the principal percussionist of the New Britain Symphony and performs in the percussion sections of the Ridgefield and Waterbury Symphonies. He has also played with the New Haven Symphony, Eastern Connecticut Symphony, Norwalk Symphony, Bridgeport Symphony, Opera Theater of Connecticut, New Britain Opera, and numerous other groups throughout New England. He has taught percussion, theory, and composition at Keene State since 2003 and is also on the faculty at Holyoke Community College.
Located off Wyman Way, the Redfern Arts Center is accessible to people with disabilities. To request accommodations for a disability, please call the box office at 603-358-2168 prior to the concert.
