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Composer Larsen visiting DePauw for guest residency
The DePauw University School of Music has welcomed guest composer Libby Larsen to campus Thursday through Sunday for the annual Music of the 21st Century residency.
The residency has brought some of the world's most outstanding composers to DePauw, including such artists as George Crumb and Joan Tower.
The series, underwritten by DePauw alums Robert A. and Margaret A. Schmidt, provides an opportunity for personal interaction with composers, allowing students and faculty to study, perform and share with audiences music written not long ago and far away but in the present.
Called the "mistress of composition" by the Times Union, Larsen, 62, is one of America's most prolific and most performed living composers. Sporting a catalogue of more than 500 works, her creations span virtually every genre from intimate vocal and chamber music to massive orchestral works and operas.
Her music has been praised for its deeply inspired and vigorous contemporary American spirit. Grammy award-winning and widely recorded, she is constantly sought after for commissions and premieres by major artists and ensembles around the world.
Larsen's five-day residency at DePauw includes a full calendar of master classes and coaching sessions, along with three concerts.
Two performances, on Thursday (tonight) and Friday at 7:30 p.m. in Thompson Recital Hall of the Green Center for the Performing Arts, will focus on some of the composer's chamber works, including "Corker" for clarinet and percussion, "Mephisto Rag" for piano and "Eleanor Roosevelt" for soprano and chorus.
A gala-style closing concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 3 in Kresge Auditorium, will feature music written for larger forces -- orchestra, chorus and band.
Larsen's visit concludes with a performance of "Holy Roller," an inventive work for large wind ensemble, by the DePauw University Band with music faculty member Scotty Stepp as alto sax soloist.
Larsen's many commissions and recordings are a testament to her collaborations with a long list of world-renowned artists, including The King's Singers, Benita Valente and Frederica von Stade.
The composer has also received numerous awards and accolades, including a 1994 Grammy as producer of the CD "The Art of Arlene Augér," an acclaimed recording featuring Larsen's "Sonnets from the Portuguese." It will be performed by soprano Barbara Paré and pianist John Clodfelter on the Friday concert in Thompson Recital Halll.
USA Today, which selected Larsen's opera "Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus" as one of the eight best classical music events of 1990, hailed her as "the only English-speaking composer since Benjamin Britten who matches great verse with fine music so intelligently and expressively."
Larsen's music and ideas have refreshed the concert music tradition and the composer's role in it, experts assert.
"Music exists in an infinity of sound," Larsen says. "I think of all music as existing in the substance of the air itself. It is the composer's task to order and make sense of sound, in time and space, to communicate something about being alive through music."
The coordinator of DePauw's Music of the 21st Century series, now in its 11th season, is Amy Lynn Barber, a percussion professor at the DPU School of Music and specialist in contemporary music.
"Libby Larsen's music could only have been written by an American composer," Barber observed. "It is so steeped in American folklore, history, mythology and literature. Audiences connect immediately to the beauty, expressivity, color, rhythm, wit and humor in her music."
Concert tickets to the Music of the 21st Century series can be purchased for $5 in advance and $7 the day of the performance.
All coaching and master classes are free and open to the public, and admission to DePauw School of Music events is always free to all students, seniors and children, as long as tickets are available.
Anyone wanting to attend a music event, who cannot afford full ticket price, can also take advantage of the school's pay-what-you-can option.
For additional information, including a detailed schedule, persons may visit www.dep-auw.edu/music, or contact the Green Center, 658-4827.
Tickets may be purchased in person at the GCPA box office, located at 605 S. College Ave. in Greencastle, or online at www.depauw.edu/music/tickets.