Students Musicians Perform in November
Westmont student musicians and composers show off their talents at free concerts this month in Westmont’s Deane Chapel on lower campus. For more information, please contact the music department at (805) 565-6040.
The Composer’s Concert, highlighting original works by Westmont student composers and performers, is Friday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m. “It’s an hour of original music, all by student composers and performers, taking lessons with Steve Butler,” says senior musician and composer Jay Real. The composers include Real, Gabriel Rojas ’22, Payton Dugas ’22, Jared Clarke ’21, Dylan Monacelli ’21, Sarah Hooker ’20, Kenny Galindo ’20, Alex Dill ’19.
The Vocal Chamber Concert will feature the Westmont Chamber Singers, a select ensemble drawn from the Westmont College Choir, on Sunday, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m. The Chamber Singers, under the direction of Grey Brothers, will sing a varied program of music composed from the late Renaissance through the current century.
“The program will begin with music from New Spain and the Santa Barbara Mission, recently performed as part of a celebration of the Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library collection,” Brothers says. “We’ll feature a piece written in Mexico City in the early 18th century by cathedral music director Manuel de Sumaya and the Sanctus and Agnus Dei of the Misa del quarto tono a 4 voces, which appears in a manuscript found in the Santa Barbara Mission Archive collection.”
Accompanying these pieces will be Westmont faculty member Pascal Salomon, harpsichord and organ, and student Logan Hodgson, cello. The program will continue with varied selections by 16th century German composer Hans Leo Hassler, early American composer William Billings, and recent compositions by South Coast composer Craig Phillips, Brazilian composer Daniel R. Afonso, Jr., and eminent American composer Libby Larsen.
The musical group Pear Tree and Partridge, consisting of Mary Vanhoozer, piano, and Laura Hairgrove Randall, flute, performs with special guest artist Robert Nicholson on cello Nov. 11, at 3 p.m. They will perform music by Bach, Haydn and Josh Rodriguez.
Their program will include, among other things, their own arrangement of Bach’s delightful and comical trio sonata “Sanguineus and Melancholicus” and a new commission by Rodriguez.
Vanhoozer, a professional concert pianist, chamber musician and pedagogue, received a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Hairgrove Randall, a classically trained flutist, traverso player and arts entrepreneur, is from the Boston/Providence metro area. Nicholson, a founding member of the Halo Ensemble, has performed in Hungary, Finland, Bangkok and around the U.S. Rodriguez, born in Cordoba, Argentina and spent his childhood in Guatemala and Mexico where he studied piano, guitar, saxophone and violin, earned a Bachelor of Arts in music at Thomas Edison State College, a Master of Music in Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music and a doctorate at UCLA.
The Westmont College Jazz Ensemble presents its fall concert Wednesday, Nov. 14, at 8 p.m., featuring vocalists Alyssa Walsh, Bridget Broderick, Joy Glenn and Liz Macias. They will sing a spectrum of songs from jazz standards to pop and R&B, including Gershwins’ “Someone to Watch Over Me,” Rodgers and Hart’s “Bewitched” and Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer’s “Skylark.” The concert will include more recent selections including “Unchain My Heart,” popularized by Ray Charles, Carole King’s “Natural Woman,” an historic hit by Aretha Franklin, and Madeleine Peyroux’s “Don’t Wait Too Long.” Instrumentalists John Butler and Jay Real will be featured on vocals in the up-tempo jazz standard, “The Way You Look Tonight” and Jason Robert Brown’s “Someone Else’s Clothes,” respectively. All the singers will join together for a rousing version of Kurt Carr’s R&B/gospel adaptation of “Kumbaya.”
Instrumentalists in the ensemble include Chris Fedderson (clarinet and saxophones), Drake Bogataj (trumpet), Taylor Jennings (guitar), Real (string bass and piano), Max Mutch (piano) and Butler (drums). Ensemble director John Douglas will also be playing piano on some selections. Ensemble instrumentals include Dizzy Gillespie’s “Salt Peanuts,” Sergio Mendes’ “Groovy Samba,” Eddie Harris’ “Cold Duck Time,” Bobby Timmons’ “Moanin’” and “The Family Guy Theme.”