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The Lafayette Concert Choir and Chamber Singers will join several professional singers and musicians in the world premiere performance of composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea” 3 p.m. Sunday, April 13, in the Williams Center for the Arts.
Gabriela Lena Frank, left, hosts a composing workshop.
Frank, a Grammy-nominated and Latin Grammy-winning composer and pianist, has served a year-long residency at Lafayette taking part in an interdisciplinary arts symposium, conducting master classes, workshops, and lectures, and presenting a piano recital in February. Her original composition was commissioned specifically for the College and is inspired by the poetry of Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra.
In addition to the Lafayette choirs, the concert will feature the Concord Chamber Singers, international soloists Andrew Garland and Susanna Eyton-Jones, Grammy award-winning Chiara String Quartet, and concert pianists Molly Morkoski and Holly Roadfeldt. It will be conducted by Jennifer Kelly, associate professor of music and director of choral activities.
A pre-concert lecture featuring students presenting their work inspired by Frank’s commission will be at 2 p.m. in the Williams Center. Judson Waite ’14 (Morristown, N.J.), a double major in economics and policy studies, is creating a sculptural work; Katherine Cedillos ’17 (Gaithersburg, Md.) and Hannah Weaver ’17 (Highland Park, N.J.) are researching Cuadra’s poetry; and Shannon Moran ’14 (Levittown, N.Y.), an English and music double major, will present her honors thesis focusing on the setting of the poetry/music and the performance.
The programming is supported in large part by a portion of the grant the College received in 2011 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to infuse arts throughout the curriculum.