UW Collegiate Chorale and Wind Symphony Final Concert May 6

“Translations of Sound’ is the University of Wyoming’s Collegiate Chorale and UW Wind Symphony’s final concert of the academic year Saturday, May 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts concert hall.

Tickets cost $10.50 for the public; $7.50 for senior citizens and $6.50 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.

UW Department of Music’s Nicole Lamartine directs the UW Collegiate Chorale, and the UW Wind Symphony is conducted by Bob Belser.

“Translations of Sound” will bring together the chorale and symphony in the season finale.

“Translation first comes to mind as the prose in one language becomes the prose in another -- the intent of the communication is the same, just voiced differently,” Lamartine says.

The Collegiate Chorale will present pieces that the group will perform in Spain in October. UW’s contingent is the only U.S. choir chosen to compete in the 49th annual Tolosa Choral Contest, Lamartine says.

During the final concert, UW students will perform a required piece, Monteverdi’s “Si ch’io vorrei morire,” which translates loosely into the longing for passion, and the required piece of Basque popular music “Xota Xaldun,” a commentary on luck and fate.

The chorale also will present three American folk hymn settings arranged by Shawn Kirchner, an African-American spiritual, and “Jai Ho,” the popular song from the Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire.”

The UW Wind Symphony will present works that were created in one "voice" and rescored into another "voice" -- the sounds of the piano and orchestra into the aural colors of winds and percussion, Belser says.

A set of five miniatures -- musical works of a single impression -- written for solo piano by Spanish composer Joaquin Turina, opens with dawn, takes the listener through short images of a day and closes with a rousing fiesta.

Belser says composer Paul Hindemith championed, and challenged, the winds throughout his life, and his second symphony, “Mathis der Maler” (Matthew the Painter), is an assimilation of music from his opera of the same name, into a triptych, translated for band by Guy Duker.

Belser chose to close the performance with one of the standards of early 20th century band programs, the “Finale” from Tchaikovsky's “4th Symphony.”

For more information, call Lamartine at (307) 288-0042 or email choir@uwyo.edu; or call Belser at (307) 766-3877 or email belserrs@uwyo.edu.