SU Hosts Annual Spring Music Festival May 5-12

SALISBURY, MD---Salisbury University presents music from the U.S. (and abroad) during its annual Spring Music Festival, “American Adventures: Music That Inspired a Nation,” May 5-12.

All performances are 7:30 p.m. in Holloway Hall Auditorium.

The Salisbury and University chorales inaugurate the festival with the concert “An American Landscape” on Saturday, May 5.

Directed by Dr. William Folger, co-chair of SU’s Music, Theatre and Dance Department, the concert celebrates the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth with A Choral Quilt, featuring selections from the composer’s Mass and musicals. A performance of Ola Gjeilo’s “Evening Prayer” is dedicated to SU President Janet Dudley-Eshbach, who will step down in June after nearly 18 years at the helm of the University. Dan Forrest’s A Bronze Triptych, featuring four-handed piano and hand bells, rounds out the program, telling the story about the life of a carillon bell (like those in SU’s new Brown and Church Carillon).

Admission is $12; $9 for seniors 60+ and SU faculty, staff and alumni; $5 for non-SU students; $3 for SU students; free for children under 10. For advance tickets visit www.salisbury.edu/performingarts.

The Salisbury Pops, directed by Lee Knier, continues the festival with a program representing the Americas and Great Britain on Tuesday, May 8. Selections include “Mambo,” also from Bernstein’s West Side Story; Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Sea Songs”; Leroy Anderson’s “The Girl I Left Behind”; Rossano Galante’s “Landscapes”; Earle Hagen’s “Harlem Nocturne”; and a George Gershwin medley. In tribute to Dudley-Eshbach (a Latin American literature and Spanish-language scholar), the band also performs a medley of well-known Mexican folk songs, Viva Mexico!, and Folger, tenor John Wesley Wright, and SU music students and alumni sing the University’s Alma Mater.

The SU Jazz Ensemble, directed by Jerry Tabor, welcomes the EKW Trio to campus on Wednesday, May 9. Comprised of national recording artists David Kikoski (piano), Ben Wolfe (bass) and Donald Edwards (drums), the special performance serves as a prelude to the ensemble’s annual Spring Concert on Thursday, May 10, during which the guests perform with SU students. Director Jerry Tabor debuts several original contemporary compositions at the May 10 performance.

Admission to the Salisbury Pops, jazz trio and Jazz Ensemble concerts is free. For more information about these or the chorale concert call 410-548-5588.

The festival culminates with the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra’s annual Spring Concert, “East Meets West,” featuring guest artist Christopher Blasdel on shakuhachi (an end-blown Japanese flute), on Saturday, May 12.

Directed by Dr. Jeffrey Schoyen, selections include Joseph Swenson’s Shizue, Fantasy for Shakuhachi and String Orchestra, Tan Dun’s “Symphonic Poem of Three Notes,” Claude Debussy’s Trois Nocturnes and Carl Maria von Weber’s Turandot, incidental music, J. 75 (Op. 37). Also featured are two video game-based compositions familiar to many children and gamers in the U.S. and beyond: Hirokazu Ando’s “Kirby”’s 20th Anniversary Medley and Koji Kondo’s “The Legend of Zelda” 25th Anniversary Medley, both arranged by Andrés Soto.

Admission is $25, $20 for seniors age 60 and older, $10 for SU faculty and staff, and $5 for students and children 18 and under. Advance tickets are available online at www.SalisburySymphonyOrchestra.org and at the Guerrieri Student Union Information Desk. For more information about the SSO concert call 410-543-8366.

“American Adventure: The Music that Inspired a Nation” is sponsored by the Music, Theatre and Dance Department.