The California State University, Fresno Department of Music celebrates 100 years of achievement at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 8, with its Gala Centennial Concert, featuring outstanding alumni, current students, faculty and emeriti faculty.
The event will be staged at the Concert Hall of the Music Building. Tickets are $15 general; $10 students.
The performance will open with the Jazz Orchestra, under the direction of Dr. Alan Durst. The group also will be led by Emeritus Director of Bands, Dr. Lawrence Sutherland, who directed the top jazz group from 1969 to 1999.
Alumni soloists – and college music instructors – Mike Dana (guitar), Larry Honda (saxophone) and Brian Hamada (drums) will share the stage.
The Fresno State Concert Choir, conducted by Dr. Anna Hamre and accompanied by Joungmin Sur, in a world premiere of the first movement of Fresno composer Kevin Memley’s “Magnificat.” Memley is a choral director at Clovis East High School.
The premiere will feature brass and percussion students from the Wind Orchestra, conducted by Dr. Gary Gilroy.
The Wind Orchestra performance will feature the premiere of a march composed for the Centennial by alumnus John Bliss, chief arranger for the Air Force Band in Washington, D.C.
The Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dr. Thomas Loewenheim, plans a rare performance of Aram Khachaturian’s “Third Symphony,” a bombastic symphonic poem scored for full orchestra, prominent organ solos and 15 additional trumpets.
The program finale will be the Fresno State “Alma Mater,” arranged by Gilroy and Loewenheim, performed by the Symphony Orchestra and a mass choir of all the evening’s performers.
Tickets are available by clicking here.
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