DePauw Orchestra selected for university premiere Sunday

Thursday, October 26, 2017
The DePauw University Orchestra has been selected to give the university premiere of American composer Kevin Puts’ new work “The City” at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29. Orcenith Smith, the ensemble’s music director, will conduct the concert in the Green Center’s Kresge Auditorium.
Courtesy photo

Sunday’s ArtsFest 2017 concert by the DePauw University Orchestra will include a premiere by the prominent American composer Kevin Puts.

Orcenith Smith will conduct the 3 p.m. Oct. 29 performance in the Green Center’s Kresge Auditorium.

Featured on the program will be “The City,” a new work co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the Baltimore Symphony and California’s Cabrillo Festival of New Music. It was selected for DePauw’s annual ArtsFest after Smith, the University Orchestra’s music director, heard the West Coast premiere at the Cabrillo Festival and was inspired to secure the first college performance of the piece at DePauw.

The work centers on the historic development of the City of Baltimore with images by videographer James Bartolomeo.

“But what makes the piece so significant and so powerful for everyone to experience is that the work takes on the tone of the city’s recent civil unrest,” Smith said. “As the piece unfolds, the turmoil desperately climaxes into fitful silence, followed by a developing vision of reconciliation.”

Aptly paired with the new piece by Puts will be Adolphus Hailstork’s “Epitaph for a Man with a Dream,” composed in 1978 in memory of Martin Luther King Jr., and Arvo Pärt’s “Summa” for String Orchestra, originally conceived as a choral work, then later re-scored for strings in 1991.

Later this fall, friends and family can also look forward to the University Orchestra’s annual Thanksgiving Week concert, “Gather Together,” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 20. The ensemble will also perform during the upcoming School of Music Holiday Gala and Family Concert to be given on Dec. 2 and 3, respectively.

General admission tickets for student orchestra performances are $5. Tickets for seniors over 65, youth and all students are free.

For additional information or to purchase tickets online, visit music.depauw.edu or stop by the GCPA box office at 605 College Ave. The venue’s box office is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday from noon to 4 p.m. and beginning 90 minutes prior to each performance.

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