Western Washington University’s Department of Music will host the Northstar Saxophone Quartet at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 9 in the Performing Arts Center Mainstage Theater.
The free performance will feature Scott Granlund, soprano saxophone; WWU Music faculty Nicole Barnes, alto saxophone; Bryan Smith, tenor saxophone; and Jay Easton, baritone saxophone. The evening program will include works by Piazzolla, Lukas, Glass and others. They will also perform a Northwest premiere of "Quartet" by award-winning composer Wes Matthews.
Western Washington University’s Wind Symphony will perform with saxophone virtuoso and faculty member Nicole Barnes at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 25 in the Performing Arts Center Concert Hall.
The performance is free and open to the public.
“I am very excited about this upcoming concert. The program is very different from anything we have ever done at WWU. It uses the Wind Band in two completely different ways,” said Christopher Bianco, conductor of the WWU Wind Symphony.
Consider this the all-star game of state high school music.
The stars aligned for 25 Sequim High School students this winter as they earned all-state status. They are scheduled to perform at the Washington Music Educator’s Conference this weekend in Yakima.
The list includes 20 SHS band members along with five all-state choir singers.
Consider this the all-star game of state high school music.
The stars aligned for 25 Sequim High School students this winter as they earned all-state status. They are scheduled to perform at the Washington Music Educator’s Conference this weekend in Yakima.
The list includes 20 SHS band members along with five all-state choir singers.
Western Washington University faculty and staff can get 20-percent discounts, and WWU alumni can get 50-percent discounts, to the first three opening nights of "The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!)" at the Mount Baker Theatre.
The discounts are valid only for the shows on Feb. 10, 11 and 12. These dates also include a special Q&A session with director Mark Kuntz, an associate professor of Theatre Arts, and the show's cast.
It's Carl Sagan like you've never heard him: his digitized, remixed voice sounds more like something emanating from a radio tuned to a pop music station than from a TV playing a public television documentary. Footage of the scientist in his award-winning PBS series Cosmos mingles with stunning computer animations depicting complex scientific concepts. This is all part of a novel project called Symphony of Science, which is meant to bring science to the masses with the use of modern media. Nearly five million YouTube users have already tuned in to watch.
Jeffrey Gilliam, a piano professor at Western Washington University, will perform at 7 p.m. Friday at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Longview.
Gilliam has taught piano and piano accompanying at Western since 1992. Before that, he taught at The Juilliard School and the University of Michigan. Gilliam also worked on the faculty of the International Menuhin Music Academy in Switzerland for fourteen years.
About 11 years ago I wrote a column about aging and seeing music. It made sense at the time as I was turning 30 and that seemed like a big milestone. The problem, of course, is that I didn’t know anything about the subject yet.
While turning 30 feels like you’re getting old, I found the big change was going from 35 to 40. That’s when the lure of home got stronger and the novelty of music faded.
Arthur Shaw came to the AA orchestra festival at C.M. Russell High School as a guest conductor on Monday with only a few expectations.
He knew he was going to be working with fellow college professor Robert Baldwin and he knew he would be working with orchestra students from Flathead, Glacier, CMR and Great Falls high schools.
"I didn't know what to expect, but I knew there was a wonderful program here," Shaw said.
Eric Kean, a viola professor at Western Washington University, and pianist David Brooks, a recent soloist with the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra and a former WWU music student, team up to pay tribute to viola virtuoso William Primrose in an event titled "The Virtuosic Violist" at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29, in the Rotunda Room of the Whatcom Museum.
Featured works include the dazzling La Campanella, by Paganini-Primrose, and Sarasateana, a Suite of Spanish Dances.
Long Island-raised Eric Kean has two career paths - he's a violist (who's played Carnegie Hall) and he has taught mathematics at Western Washington University since 2001 (and viola since 2002). He and former Western student David Brooks, also a violist, present "The Virtuosic Violist," a concert that pays tribute to composer William Primrose, at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29, at Whatcom Museum's Old City Hall Building's Rotunda Room. Tickets for the concert are $15 adults, $12 seniors and $10 students.
Question: What were you like as a child?
This weekend features a pair of local events that brim with promise.
First is the Whatcom Symphony's annual free kids concert, highlighted by a performance of Lemony Snicket's "The Composer is Dead."
"The Composer is Dead" is a musical murder mystery designed to introduce the instruments that compose an orchestra. It was written by Daniel Handler, who is better known to gazillions of kids as the author/narrator of the "Series of Unfortunate Events" books.
Western Washington University’s Sanford Piano Series will conclude its 2009-2010 season with a concert featuring Stephen Beus at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 14, in the Performing Arts Center Concert Hall.
The evening program will include a variety of works by Bach, Beethoven, Griffes, and Medtner.
The Western Washington University Concert Choir will perform a concert titled “Songs of War and Reconciliation” at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 9, in the Performing Arts Center Concert Hall.
The evening program will feature classical and folk music from a variety of composers and cultures. Performing with the Concert Choir will be special guests, the WWU University Advanced Women’s Choir.
The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, please call (360) 650-3772.
Laura Stambaugh (Music) presented a paper about instrumental music practice techniques at the International Symposium on Performance Science in Auckland, New Zealand. She also co-authored "An fMRI Investigation of the Cultural Specificity of Music Memory" (Steven M. Demorest; Steven J. Morrison; Laura A. Stambaugh; Munir Beken; Todd L.
More than 170 people attended Sunday’s 10th annual “Handel With Care” at Trinity United Methodist Church.
The annual community sing-along of Handel’s “Messiah” raised $4,476 for Sequim Community Aid with concert-goers donating $2,238 and an anonymous Sequim couple matching it.
The 62-year-old aid organization provides assistance with rent or utilities and social service referrals.
“So many people help, I’m not going to try to name them all,” said Shirley Anderson as people began filing into the pews and finding the music scores.
Katie Van Kooten, a Lynden native and acclaimed soprano, will return home after great successes at London’s Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera and Houston Grand Opera to headline a Christmas concert benefiting the Bellingham Festival of Music. The concert will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 17, in Western Washington University's Performing Arts Center Concert Hall.
Members of the Western Washington University singing group FM Singers, along with a few other staff members and students, walked through campus on Wednesday, Dec. 16, singing well known Christmas carols, many of them with lyrics modified to fit WWU.
For example, here are the words to "Grey Christmas," written by Environmental Health and Safety's Bruce Boyer:
Each and every season for 25 years, Grammy Award-winning artists Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumbel have been creating a longstanding tradition of holiday performances. The joyful concert comes to the Northshore Performing Arts Center stage Saturday, Dec. 19.
Take two violins, a viola and a harp, add a flute, three harps and a dramatic narrator, dress them all like they just walked out of a 12th Century cathedral and put a 100-voice choir behind them, and you’ve got the makings of Blaine’s annual Christmas time visit of the popular group NOEL! The event transforms Blaine’s Performing Arts Center into a living pageant of traditional Christmas music and has become an annual tradition that marks the heart of the Christmas season.
Western Washington University’s Sanford Piano Series will conclude its 2009-2010 season with a concert featuring Stephen Beus at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 14, in the Performing Arts Center Concert Hall.
The evening program will include a variety of works by Bach, Beethoven, Griffes, and Medtner.
Finding something you enjoy and making it a successful business is never easy, but it seems Ron Rondello has accomplished both.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Rondello moved his 26-year-old business, which used to be called Harris Music, to the former Fussner Monuments building at 1427 N. State St. The name of the business is now Bellingham Music and its focus is guitars - including classical and high-end guitars such as Martin and Santa Cruz brands - but there are a variety of other instruments and sheet music for sale.
Western Washington University’s Wind Symphony will perform with guest artist Roshanne Etezady at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 19 in the Performing Arts Center Concert Hall.
The free performance will feature an eclectic mix of Wind Band classics and cutting-edge contemporary repertoire, as well as a number of original compositions by Etezady, who will be on campus for the WWU Wind Symphony Composer in Residence Series.
The Associated Students Pop Music will host the band The Books on Nov. 21 in the Performing Arts Center Mainstage.
The Books are an experimental band that mixes electronica, folk and acoustic music. They are comprised of Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto, both based out of Massachusetts. During live shows they use audio-video technology to incorporate samples of sounds, speech, music, text and pictures.
