The SOU Percussion ensemble had a busy spring term planned with a trip to New York and much more. However, the travel plans had to be adjusted in accordance with the changes with SOU’s guidelines during COVID-19.
Taran McGuire, a senior this year, sees the new situation in a positive light. He states that SOU’s distance learning model is allowing for new creative solutions where all new ideas are welcome.

Oregon Center for the Arts students are finding new innovative ways to interact with their professors, fellow students, and community. OCA Music student Tatjana Luce recently completed 30 days of 30 seconds of music. When it came time to post the video Tatjana was innovative in editing the pieces together on her phone, adapting to utilize the technology she had on hand.

Associate Professor and Music Department Chair, Dr. Cynthia Hutton will retire this Spring 2020 after 26 years of teaching at SOU. Dr. Hutton’s teaching contributions to the Music program at SOU included teaching courses in music education, music theory, aural skills, conducting, and for 24 years she was the Director of Bands at SOU.

The Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University Music Program proudly presents the Southern Oregon University Wind Ensemble Spring Concert spring concert. The concert, titled Music from Latin America will be held on Thursday, June 8 at 7:30 PM in the SOU Music Recital Hall.

 

The Southern Oregon University Wind Ensemble under the direction of Dr. Cynthia Hutton will perform a festive final concert of the academic year, Music from Latin America.  Pieces include “La Fiesta Mexicana” by Owen Reed, “Bachianas Brasileiras No.2” by Brazilian composer, Heitor Villa Lobos, “El Retiro” by Colombian composer, Alfredo Mejia Vallejo, “La Bamba De Vera Cruz” by Argentine composer, Terig Tucci, and “San Antonio Dances” by Frank Ticheli.

 

The program will feature Zachary Yu Yang, Saxophonist and Junior Music Major at Southern Oregon University. Mr. Yang, the 2017 SOU Wind Ensemble Concerto Competition recipient will perform the “Fantasia for Alto Saxophone” for concert band and solo saxophone by Claude T Smith. States Cynthia Hutton, Wind Ensemble Director and Associate Professor of Music, “the concert promises an evening of beautiful and spirited music, please tell your friends and join us. Ole!”

 

The Southern Oregon University Wind Ensemble is the sole wind band on the campus of Southern Oregon University. It is an ensemble of approximately 45 members and is opened to talented musicians from all disciplines; both music majors and non-music majors are accepted. The Wind Ensemble seeks to obtain the highest quality level of musicianship and performance. It is dedicated to the study of a diverse repertoire for winds and percussion from the masterworks to recent commissions of new compositions. The Wind Ensemble has performed for the Oregon State Music Educators Association Conference, the Lawrence R. Sutherland Intercollegiate Wind Band Festival, the College Band Director Regional Conference and the Western International Band Conference.

 

Tickets for this performance are $10 for regular admission, $5 for seniors, and free for students. All tickets are general admission. The OCA box office is located in the SOU Music Building, off South Mountain Avenue. The box office hours are noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and two hours prior to performances. Tickets can be purchased with a credit card over the phone by calling (541) 552-6348 or online at oca.sou.edu/box-office. Please contact the box office for discounts offered to SOU alumni, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute participants, and SNAP/Oregon Trail cardholders.

 

The Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University (SOU) Music Program proudly presents two events with guest musicians, NoiseFold. Cory Metcalf and David Stout, who comprise NoiseFold will give an Artist Talk on Thursday, May 25 at 12:30 PM in the Meese Auditorium in the SOU Art Building. Then NoiseFold will join SOU’s own Left Edge Collective in concert on Friday, May 26 at 7:30 PM in the SOU Music Recital Hall.

Melding real-time animation and generative electronic sound within the legacy of cybernetics and mathematic visualization, NoiseFold (Cory Metcalf and David Stout) celebrates the evolution of visual music as a form of instrumental play with semi-autonomous systems. The artists re-imagine a painterly abstraction to suggest elemental narratives that evoke highly charged emotional states. From subtle life-like emanations to roiling upheavals of sound and light the resulting audio-visual events are at once familiar, mysterious and strange.

Left Edge Collective is a new music organization founded and directed by David Bithell and Terry Longshore at the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University. Left Edge composes, performs, improvises, creates interdisciplinary projects, and hosts an annual festival of contemporary performance which focuses on presenting and premiering new works by members of Left Edge, works by nationally recognized guest artists, and collaborations between artistic disciplines.

For the performance on Friday, May 26 at 7:30 PM, Left Edge Collective welcomes guest artists NoiseFold – transdisciplinary artists working at the fuzzy boundary blurring nexus of visual art, music and interactive cinema. Left Edge Collective will premiere two new works by David Bithell: “Shepard”, for four vibraphones, explores a temporal equivalent to shepard tones – overlapping frequencies that seem to rise infinitely. In this work, the ensemble appears to speed up continually.

In “CavitationStudy.01”, to be performed, Bithell states, “Plants make sound – if we know how to listen. There is the rustling of leaves, the creaking of branches or trunks, the lone tree falling in a forest, all created by forces external to the plant. Internally, rhythms are created by the formation and bursting of microscopic gas bubbles in vessels. This process of cavitation occurs at frequencies and time scales well beyond the range of human hearing.  In this performance, these events are made audible through a variety of methods of data sonification.  The timing of recorded cavitation events serves as the structural backbone as well as the generator of local rhythms.  The sound of cavitation events themselves are transposed into the audible frequency and used as part of the sonic environment.  All of these elements are activated by sensors that read the resistance of conductive inks drawn on plant matter collected locally in the Rogue Valley.

Tickets for this performance are $10 for regular admission, $5 for seniors, and free for students. All tickets are general admission. The OCA box office is located in the SOU Music Building, off South Mountain Avenue. The box office hours are noon to 600 PM. Monday through Friday, and two hours prior to performances. Tickets can be purchased with a credit card over the phone by calling (541) 552-6348 or online at oca.sou.edu/box-office. Please contact the box office for discounts offered to SOU alumni, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute participants, and SNAP/Oregon Trail cardholders.

 

The Theatre Arts program of the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University (SOU) presents the Tony Award-winning Peter and the Starcatcher at the Craterian Theater in Medford. Performances will take place Friday, May 26 at 7:30 PM, Saturday May 27 at 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM, and Sunday, May 28 at 2:00 PM.

Based on Peter and the Starcatchers, the popular children’s book by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, Peter and the Starcatcher serves as a prequel to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, providing answers to such questions as, “where exactly is Neverland? How did the Lost Boys become lost? And when did Peter learn to fly?”

Written by Rick Elice, Peter and the Starcatcher was a huge hit on Broadway, winning five Tony awards in 2014, and earning nearly universal critical acclaim. New York magazine called it “miraculous,” exclaiming, “spectacle, wit, and joy spill out of this play like treasure from a magic pocket.”

Beyond the play’s appeal as a Peter Pan prequel, Peter and the Starcatcher also wins audiences with its do-it-yourself, story-theater aesthetic, according to David McCandless, SOU Professor of Theater, who is directing the production. “The play has a delightful, catch-as-catch-can quality,” McCandless explains. “At its heart, it’s just a bunch of actors with a few props telling a story. It’s a great show for audiences of all ages.”

The play is also genuinely witty, according to McCandless. “It’s full of cheeky humor and dazzling language,” he remarks. “It’s the funniest play I’ve read in a long time.” In addition, while not exactly a musical, the play boasts hearty, catchy songs composed by Wayne Barker. According to McCandless, “the play is also a love story, as Peter comes into his own through his close friendship with the extraordinary Molly Aster, the play’s heroine.”

Peter and the Starcatcher will play at the Craterian Theater in Medford because SOU’s theatre building is being readied for a long-delayed renovation. “To paraphrase a line from Shakespeare in Love, SOU had a play, and we had a theater,” said Stephen McCandless, Executive Director of the Craterian. The McCandless brothers grew up in Medford and pursued careers in other locales until their separate professional trajectories returned them to the Rogue Valley.

The cast of Peter and the Starcatcher includes Bernard Hefner, Ethan Hennes, John Alan Hulbert, Grant Luecke, Alex Magni, Samantha Miller, Meghan Nealon, Nolan Sanchez, Kyle Sanderson, Eric Solis, Jonah Thorpe-Kramp, Krista Unverferth, and Tavis Williams. The design team consists of Sean O’Skea (set), Michael Stanfill (lighting), Estrella Page-Lopez (costumes), and Reilly Schrader-Dee (sound). Jennifer Schloming provides musical direction, and Cailey McCandless choreography.   Melissa Hampton serves as stage manager, with Andy Palstring as technical director.

Performances take place Friday, May 26 at 7:30 PM, Saturday May 27 at 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM, and Sunday, May 28 at 2:00 PM at the Craterian Theater in Medford, at 23 S Central Ave, Medford, OR 97501.

Tickets are being sold through the Craterian Theater Box Office. Tickets are: $22 general admission and $10 for youth (ages 6-20). Tickets can be purchased online at https://www.craterian.org/ or by calling 541-779-3000.

 

The Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University Music Program proudly presents the spring concert by SOU Percussion Ensembles, directed by Terry Longshore.  The Lou Harrison Centennial Celebration concert, which will be performed on Thursday, May 18 at 7:30 PM in the SOU Music Recital Hall, is a tribute to Lou Harrison (1917-2003) on his 100th birthday. One of percussion music’s pioneers, Harrison composed some of our most compelling early works.

A student of Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, Lou Harrison was influenced by the music of Indonesia, Japan, and Korea and was very interested in tuning systems. He composed many works for Javanese gamelan, as well as for his own homemade and found instruments. He was also a prolific poet, artist, and music critic.  In the late 1930s and early 1940s, along with John Cage, Harrison composed numerous important works for percussion ensemble, especially quartets. Unlike a string quartet in which every piece is for the same instruments, percussion quartets can vary widely from piece to piece and include dozens of instruments.

For the Lou Harrison Centennial Celebration, three of Harrison’s percussion quartets will be performed, all composed in 1941. All of the quartets combine instruments from around the world with found sounds from junkyards, antique shops, and kitchens. Harrison and Cage were true curators of sound, choosing instruments based on their sonic qualities, not their ethnic identities or price tags.  I am particularly excited that Harrison’s poetry will be read by members of the ensemble between the musical works,” states Terry Longshore, SOU Percussion Ensembles Director and Professor of Music.

The concert will open with “Double Music”, co-composed with John Cage. It features water buffalo bells (here played on large Swiss cowbells), automobile brake drums, water gong, thunder sheet, elephant bells, cowbells, Chinese gongs, and temple bowl gongs. Following that will be “Simfony #13”, a work that utilizes one of Harrison’s favorite compositional devices, the canon. Families of instruments (brake drums, wood blocks, cowbells, drums, water buffalo bells, etc.) play melodies in various canonic and unison relationships throughout the work. The final quartet, “Fugue”, also combines some beautiful sounds – clock coil gongs, resonant brake drums (here played on cast iron Bundt cake pans), tuned pipes, musical saw, wash tub, etc. – in the form of a fugue, but substituting rhythmic relationships for the typical harmonic ones. “Fugue” was so difficult that it was not performed for 20 years after its composition. It will be performed by Left Edge Percussion.

Also featured will be “Threnody for Carlos Chavez” for gamelan and solo viola, featuring Kimberly Fitch. A beautifully haunting melody played on the viola is accompanied by the shimmering, resonant sounds of Sundanese gamelan degung, here performed by Left Edge Percussion.  Harrison’s “May Rain” for soprano, prepared piano, and tam-tam gong will be performed by Jennifer Longshore and Terry Longshore. An invention of Cage’s, the prepared piano uses screws, bolts, rubber, etc. placed between the strings of the piano to emulate the sound of a percussion orchestra.

Tickets for this performance are $10 for regular admission, $5 for seniors, and free for students. All tickets are general admission. The OCA box office is located in the SOU Music Building, off South Mountain Avenue. The box office hours are noon to 600 PM. Monday through Friday, and two hours prior to performances. Tickets can be purchased with a credit card over the phone by calling (541) 552-6348 or online at oca.sou.edu/box-office. Please contact the box office for discounts offered to SOU alumni, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute participants, and SNAP/Oregon Trail cardholders.

The SOU Percussion Ensembles are comprised of undergraduate and graduate students, who perform alongside faculty members Dr. Terry Longshore and Bryan Jeffs. The ensembles are dedicated to the performance of contemporary percussion repertoire and providing the members with a variety of percussive experiences. The ensembles frequently collaborate with notable composers on premieres of new works, and repertoire ranges from contemporary music to world traditions to jazz- and rock-inspired compositions. The ensembles give several concerts every year at the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University, as well as many performances throughout the Southern Oregon community and the Pacific Northwest, and were invited to perform at the 2013 and 2014 Percussive Arts Society International Conventions (PASIC). The ensembles have self-released two CDs, “La Alma del Árbol – The Soul of the Tree”, and “Electric Rebel Poetry”. In 2015, the SOU Percussion Ensembles recorded the CD, “30”, by Stanford University composer Mark Applebaum, released internationally on the Innova Recordings label. The SOU Percussion Ensembles endorse Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets.

The Oregon Fringe Festival is underway! The festival kicked off Wednesday to host a variety of local art, film, music, and theater student-driven acts. A mixture of innovatively produced happenings, installations, and curated works from artists at Southern Oregon University, the Oregon Fringe Festival breaks boundaries and takes art out of its traditional venues. The Festival’s student producers are particularly excited to present headlining performances this weekend by special guest artists Mark Applebaum and James Donlon.

Key Fringe events are listed below – for a full schedule of Fringe events, please see www.oregonfringefestival.org. All events are FREE and open to the public.

Mark Applebaum and James DelPrince: Concerto for Florist
Friday, May 5, 6:00 PM, SOU Music Recital Hall
Saturday, May 6, 3:00 PM, Lithia Park Butler Bandshell

Mark Applebaum’s Concerto for Florist is a daring composition that exemplifies his unconventionality. Featuring floral designer James DelPrince, the piece blends floral design, musical composition, and performance work. Mark Applebaum is an internationally renowned musician and composer whose solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, operatic, and electroacoustic work has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia. www.markapplebaum.com.

James Donlon: Monsters
Friday, May 5, 10:30 PM, SOU Music Recital Hall
Saturday, May 6, 10:00 PM, SOU Music Recital Hall

James Donlon presents a devised theater piece, entitled Monsters, that changes in each manifestation. Donlon has partnered with students from the SOU Theater, Music, and Visual Arts Departments to bring this provocative work to the Oregon Fringe Festival.  James Donlon has been a celebrated master teacher, international performer, and director since 1970. The New York Times describes his work as “an extraordinary blend of skill and lunacy!” jamesdonlon.com

Visual Arts Exhibitions

Opening Receptions – Coinciding with First Friday Trolley: Friday, May 5th, 5-8pm

Exhibition Dates: May 5 – 28, 2017

Stevenson Union Gallery

figure.ground, David Bithell, Solo Exhibition

Center for the Visual Arts Galleries

Dancing with Alchemy, Mara Reinhardt, Solo Exhibition

Imagined: 30 Years of Performance Mask, James Jesse Peck, Solo Exhibition

Works by Ka’ila Farrell-Smith, Ka’ila Farrell-Smith, Solo Exhibition

[i s h], Samuel Lindley, Solo Exhibition

Revelation, Charlie Howarth, Solo Exhibition

 

The Oregon Center for the Arts (OCA) at Southern Oregon University presents Groove Machine, a concert by OCA’s in-residence ensembles the Cascade Clarinet Consort and the Siskiyou Saxophone Orchestra. The concert will be Tuesday May 30th at 7:30 PM at the SOU Music Recital Hall.

The Groove Machine concert will feature the music of American composer Marc Mellits. In addition to Black for two bass clarinets. Mellits’s Groove Canon, Mara’s Toys, December and Groove Machine from his work Revolution will be performed by the Siskiyou Saxophone Orchestra.  Composer Marc Mellits is one of the leading American composers of his generation, and is often considered a miniaturist, composing works that are comprised of short, contrasting movements or sections.  His music is eclectic, all-encompassing, colourful, and always has a sense of forward motion.

The Siskiyou Saxophone Orchestra (SSO) is renowned in the saxophone world for their commitment to expanding musical possibilities.  Tours of the SSO have included Asia, Europe and Mexico.  As the guests of the Longkou Jingsheng Musical Instrument Co., the SSO performed at the China Music Trade Show in Shanghai and at the northern seaside resort city of Yantai.  The Cascade Clarinet Consort (CCC) and SSO have performed with guest artists Edmund Welles and Globe Saxophone Quartet as well as live on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Green Show, Britt Festival, Oregon Music Educators’ Conference and the KTVL-Medford Channel 10 Morning News. They were honored by being selected for a performance at the XVth World Saxophone Congress in Bangkok, Thailand and in 2012 a consortium of the SSO opened for Branford Marsalis at the XVIth World Saxophone Congress in St. Andrews, Scotland.

The local and internationally recognized Siskiyou Saxophone Orchestra attracts students from all over the world and is led by Yamaha Performing Artist and Professor at Southern Oregon University Rhett Bender. Go to saxophone.sou.edu for more information about saxophone and clarinet activities at Southern Oregon University. Professor Bender states that he is “particularly excited about this concert because it exploits the interlocking rhythms written by one of America’s most commissioned composers, Marc Mellits. His music for saxophone and clarinet is an engaging musical journey.”

All tickets are general admission and are being sold through the Oregon Center for the Arts Box Office. The box office is located in the SOU Music Building, off South Mountain Avenue, adjacent from the Theatre building, which is currently under construction. OCA Box office hours are noon to 6 PM Monday through Friday. Tickets can be purchased with a credit card over the phone by calling 541-552-6348 or online at oca.sou.edu/box-office.

 

The Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University Theatre program proudly presents Maxim Gorky’s depiction of turn of the century Russia, Summer People. This homage to Anton Chekov, runs May 11-14, 2017 at Southern Oregon University’s Stevenson Union Arena.

Something of a de facto sequel to Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Summer People depicts the ordeals and aspirations of Russia’s new middle class, represented by several families vacationing in their summer homes. They play chess, meet for picnics, and entangle themselves in perilous romances, all while facing the unmistakable specter of change—a change some fear, some welcome, and none can avoid.

Summer People is written by Maxim Gorky, and the translation of the play is by Nicholas Sanders and Frank Dwyer. According to dramaturg Tamar Peterson, “Maxim Gorky (1868-1936), a Russian and Soviet writer, born under the name Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, got his start writing as a journalist, favoring the alias, “Gorky,” which means “the bitter one.” Gorky’s career breakthrough came when he published his first book, Essays and Stories, in 1898. He believed that literature should be a form of political commentary and protest. His best-known work, The Lower Depths, which debuted at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1902, depicts the plight of down-and-out Russians living in a shelter near the Volga River.”

Summer People is directed by James Edmondson, a long-time resident director and actor with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. “We are particularly excited about the production of Summer People because it showcases the outstanding depth and skills of our student performers. It has been a rewarding experience to work with actors who demonstrate such dedication and discipline,” states Edmonson.

Performances take place Thursday-Saturday, May 11 through 13 at 8 PM; Saturday-Sunday, May 13 through 14 at 2 PM at the Stevenson Union Arena on the Southern University Campus at University Way. Tickets are: $21 regular, $18 senior, $6 student, general admission.

Tickets are being sold through the Oregon Center for the Arts Box Office. The box office is located in the SOU Music Building, off South Mountain Avenue, adjacent from the Theatre building which is currently under construction. Remaining tickets will be on sale one hour prior to performances at the entrance to the Stevenson Union Arena. OCA Box office hours are noon to 6 PM Monday through Friday. Tickets can be purchased with a credit card over the phone by calling 541-552-6348 or online at oca.sou.edu/box-office.