The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh will host the Wisconsin Alliance for Composers (WAC) New Music Festival Feb. 27 in the Music Hall inside the Arts and Communication Center.
The festival features concerts at 3, 4 and 5:15 p.m. Admission is free and the event is open to the public.
The 3 p.m. concert will feature winning works and honorable mentions from WAC’s student composition contest. These compositions from students around the state will be performed by UW Oshkosh music department students and faculty. Many of the students will be hearing their compositions performed by live musicians for the first time.
The 4 and 5:15 p.m. concerts will include music from WAC members around the state, including UWO faculty members Ed Martin and John Mayrose. The 4 p.m. concert also features pianist and former UWO faculty member Jeri-Mae G. Astolfi, who is now at Piedmont College in Georgia.
Martin, a music professor, and Mayrose, an associate music professor, are co-organizers of the festival.
Ed Martin
“The department of music is thrilled to be hosting this year’s festival at UWO,” Martin said. “It’s a wonderful showcase for our talented student and faculty musicians who have worked hard to prepare the music.”
The 5:15 p.m. concert will include UWO faculty members Kirstin Ihde and Drew Whiting and a performance of Madison composer Michael Bell’s setting of poetry by English professor Douglas Haynes.
The collaboration is the result of the friendship of Bell and Haynes. The song cycle that will be performed is based on four poems in Haynes’ 2017 chapbook Last Word.
Bell, a sociology professor at UW-Madison, first reached out to Haynes about writing words for a classical piece he was working on, and later four poems from Last Word were used for the work that will be performed at the WAC festival. Three of the four poems, Haynes said, evoke his experiences as a husband and caregiver to someone with cancer.
“It was a new experience for me to collaborate with a composer, and I found the challenge of helping match words to music exhilarating,” Haynes said. “I deeply appreciate the new life and depth Mike Bell’s music gives to these poems.”
The annual WAC New Music Festival celebrates the composition and performance of new music in Wisconsin and brings together student and professional musicians from around the state. Last year’s festival was held virtually due to the pandemic.
For more information, visit wiscomposers.org.
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