UW Symphony Presents Brazilian Surprises at UW Dec. 5

Brazilian-themed music will be performed during the University of Wyoming Symphony Orchestra’s (UWSO) Musical Mystery Tour fall series Thursday, Dec. 5.

“Brazilian Surprises” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. in the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts concert hall. Tickets cost $12 for the public, $8 for senior citizens and $6 for students. Tickets are available at the Performing Arts box office and the Wyoming Union information desk, by calling (307) 766-6666 or going online at www.uwyo.edu/finearts.

Guest conductor Carlos Costa, from Goiânia, Brazil, will be on the podium for the concert, conducting works by composers from the late 1800s to the mid-20th century. The major work will be Radames Gnattali’s “Sinfonia Popular No. 1,” written in Rio de Janeiro in 1956. It combines elements of Brazilian popular music, film scores, serious classical introspection and South American percussion.

Bassoon virtuoso Kaori Uno-Jack, a UW Department of Music lecturer, is the soloist for the evening, performing the “Concertino for Bassoon” and “Chamber Orchestra” by Francisco Mignone.

Costa, a pianist and conductor, is a professor of music at the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), Brazil, and is the school’s music graduate program coordinator. He was president of the International Music Festival at UFG in 2010-11 and has been the coordinator of the National Research Seminar of UFG since 2014. He first guest conducted UWSO in fall 2016.

He has conducted several orchestras around the world and, as a pianist, Costa has performed in Italy, Portugal, the United States and Brazil. Costa also participated as guest piano professor at the Londrina International Festival in 2015 and 2016. He received a master’s degree in piano at Youngstown State University in Ohio and a doctoral degree in piano, with a minor in orchestral conducting, at the University of Georgia.

Uno-Jack has performed nationally and internationally as both soloist and chamber musician, earning several awards. She won the Honor Competition at the University of Colorado twice, placed fifth among 137 bassoonists at the 24th Japan Wind and Percussion Competition in 2007, and was a finalist in the Tsuyama Japan International Double Reed Competition in 2003. She is a member of the award-winning woodwind quintet Antero Winds, which has competed in several worldwide events. Uno-Jack is a member of the Colorado Ballet orchestra and Boulder Chamber Orchestra and has performed with several other ensembles throughout Colorado and Wyoming.

Uno-Jack is a bassoon instructor and associate dean of student affairs at Rocky Ridge Music and a faculty member at the Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts. She received an artist diploma in bassoon performance at the University of Colorado and graduated from the Aichi Prefecture University of Fine Arts and Music in Japan, where she was among four outstanding graduating seniors.

For more information, call Michael Griffith, UW director of orchestral activities, at (307) 766-3069 or email symph@uwyo.edu.