Concert Band Features Northern European Music
KEENE, N.H. 3/28/02 - The Keene State College Concert Band, under the direction of Professor Douglas Nelson, will perform music of Northern Europe on Friday, April 25, at 7:30 p.m. in the Main Theatre of the Redfern Arts Center on Brickyard Pond. Tickets are $7 for the general public and $5 for KSC students, senior citizens, and youth 17 and under. Call the box office at 603-358-2168.
The 55-member concert band will play music of Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Holland, and Russia during the two-hour program.
Soprano Diane Cushing will be the concert’s announcer and featured soloist. Ms. Cushing will sing Finlandia, a tone poem by Jan Sibelius. A voice instructor at Keene State College, she also is director of choral music at Gardner (Mass.) High School.
Student conductor Lisa Tower will lead the band through two pieces of Finnish music: Maamme, the national anthem of Finland, and Jan Van der Roost’s Finnish Folk Song Suite. Ms. Tower is from Norwood, Mass., and a senior music education major, who will graduate next semester.
Other highlights of the concert will include Johan de Meij’s The Lord of the Rings (Hobbits) and other music of Holland such as Bernard Zweers’s To My Country.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Galop from the musical comedy Moscow Cheremushky represents the music of Russia.
Johannes Hanssen’s march Valdres and Edvard Greig’s Funeral Music are on the Norwegian part of the program while Carl Neilsen’s Aladdin Suite and Sören Hyldgaard’s Marche Americana represent Denmark. The national anthems of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark also will be played.
In addition to conducting the KSC Concert Band, Nelson is a professor of music at Keene State, where he serves as chair of the Music Department and teaches classes in music education. He is frequently called upon as an adjudicator, guest conductor, and clinician throughout New England. He has conducted seven concert tours of Europe with the New England Ambassadors of Music.
