Music

On Tuesday, March 6, 2018 a rare performance by Michiyoshi Sato outside of Japan took place at Wesleyan University’s World Music Hall. He is one of Japan’s leading practitioners of tsugaru-jamisen, an improvisatory musical style performed on a Japanese three-stringed spike lute called a shamisen. Mr. Sato is known for a cutting-edge performance style that fuses the traditional with the modern, and the classics with pop. In his Connecticut debut, the first stop on his second tour of the United States, he stretched the limits of his instrument and his art, and took the audience through traditional folk songs, contemporary improvisation, and original compositions.

Photos by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on Flickr.

On Saturday, March 3, 2018 a new generation of artists performed Crash (2014), featuring vocalists Gelsey Bell, Brian McCorkle, Paul Pinto, Dave Ruder ’05, and Aliza Simons ’09 from the music collective Varispeed, as well as Amirtha Kidambi. The six singers rotated through the three characters of the opera, with sound by Music Director Tom Hamilton and photos by Philip Makanna. This haunting masterpiece is the last opera written by American composer Robert Ashley. Throughout his five-decade career, he radically redefined the operatic genre.

Photos by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on Flickr.

On Friday, March 2, 2018 Baritone Thomas Buckner, a longtime Robert Ashley collaborator, performed works written for him, including The Producer Speaks featuring John Spencer Camp Professor of Music Neely Bruce on piano, Tract, and The Mystery of the River arranged by Tom Hamilton; plus Litany, a new work written for this celebration by Alvin Lucier, John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, Emeritus. Assisted by Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Alex Waterman. Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department Paula Matthusen directed the chorus, and graduate music students Jordan Dykstra and Matt Wellins worked on recording and playback.

Photos by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on Flickr.

On Tuesday, February 20, 2018 The discussion, “Resistance and Civic Action in Ukraine,” took place, followed by a ticketed concert featuring the premiere performance of “This Side of the Curtain.”

Photos by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on Flickr.

On Sunday, February 11, 2018 The West End String Quartet featured Wesleyan chamber music instructors Sarah Washburn on violin, Anne Berry on cello, and John Biatowas on viola, plus the group’s new violinist Marianne Vogel. The quartet was joined by clarinetist Charles Yassky and John Spencer Camp Professor of Music and pianist Neely Bruce who performed the world premiere of Chorale and Variations by Mr. Bruce, The Neutral Mask by graduate music student Jordan Dykstra, Two Folk Songs and an Abstract by Roger Király, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Quintet in A Major for clarinet and strings, K. 581.

Photos by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on Flickr.

On Friday, December 8, 2017 the Wesleyan University Jazz Orchestra, directed by Jay Hoggard, the Wesleyan Jazz Ensemble, directed by Noah Baerman, and the new Real-Time Autoschediasms, directed by Tyshawn Sorey, performed an end-of-the-semester concert.

Photos by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on Flickr.

On Thursday, December 7, 2017 beginning students of the Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble presented an evening of Javanese music, performing a selection of repertoire for celebratory events, with a prelude by the Wesleyan Youth Gamelan Ensemble, under the direction of Joseph Getter. Consisting mostly of gong- and metallophone-type instruments, the gamelan is an essential accompaniment to feasts and ceremonies.

Photos by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on Flickr.