UW-Green Bay professors star on ‘Live from the Chazen’

Members of the UW-Green Bay Music faculty were scheduled as the featured attraction of the Feb. 20 “Sunday Afternoon Live from the Chazen” series on Wisconsin Public Radio.

The hour-long program included selections for vocals, brass, string, piano and woodwind; a premiere of new music by Prof. Michelle McQuade Dewhirst; and vocal pieces likely to be sung at next fall’s Czech/Slovak Voice Competition at UW-Green Bay.

The program opened with the 20-second “Tiny Cheesehead Fanfare” composed for last year’s “miniatures” concert on campus. Collaborating on a Poulenc trio were McQuade Dewhirst, French horn; Adam Gaines, trumpet; and Kevin Collins, trombone. Soprano Courtney Sherman and pianist David Severtsen performed a selection from Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” Severtsen accompanied mezzo-soprano Sarah Meredith Livingston on five songs by Antonin Dvorak or 20^th century Czech composers, and Sherman on a sixth, another Dvorak aria. Severtson also performed a Shostakovich prelude. Clarinetist Eric Hansen performed the piece “Wings for Solo Clarinet” by contemporary American composer Joan Tower.

Concluding the concert program was the McQuade Dewhirst composition “Ottava Rima,” with Michael Hall (viola), Severtsen and Hansen.