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Festival of the Arts

The 17th annual Festival of the Arts will be held March 18-21, 2009, involving the Departments of Art, Design, Music, Theatre and Dance. For listings of events across all disciplines, click here.

The Department of Music will open its portion of the festival with a performance by Sacramento State's top student band, the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Robert Halseth. The Wind Ensemble will be performing Wednesday, March 18 at 7:30pm in the Music Recital Hall. Admission is $8 general and $5 for students and seniors.

The Festival will continue on Thursday, March 19 at 8:00pm in the Music Recital Hall with the Sacramento State Jazz Ensemble and guest artist Terell Stafford on Trumpet. Admission to this concert is $10 general and $8 for students and seniors. Stafford has been hailed as "one of the great players of our time, a fabulous trumpet player" by piano legend McCoy Tyner. Known for being a gifted and versatile player with a voice all his own, Stafford combines lyricism and a deep love of melody with a spirited, adventurous edge. Stafford picked up his first trumpet at the age of thirteen, and even though he was drawn to jazz, initially studied classical music. While pursuing a music education degree at the University of Maryland, Stafford played with the school's jazz band. It was during this time that he began to immerse himself in jazz, listening to everything that he could get his hands on. Since the mid-1990's Stafford has performed with groups such as Benny Golson's Sextet, McCoy Tyner's Sextet, the Kenny Barron Sextet, the Frank Wess Quintet, the Jimmy Heath Big Band, and the Jon Faddis Orchestra. Currently he is a member of the Grammy-nominated Vanguard Jazz Orchestra which was established by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis and has been playing at the Village Vanguard for over 33 years. An educator as well as a performer, Stafford currently holds the positions of Professor of Music and Director of Jazz Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia and is a clinician for the prestigious Vail Foundation in Colorado and Jazz at Lincoln Center's Essentially Ellington Program. He has also served as a member of the faculty for the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies in New York. Stafford was born in Miami and raised in Chicago and Silver Spring, Maryland. He received a Bachelor of Science in Music Education from the University of Maryland in 1988 and a Masters of Music from Rutgers University in 1993.

On Friday, March 20 at 8:00pm in the Music Recital Hall, our Faculty Gala Concert will feature bassoonist Lindsey Bartlett, clarinetist Deborah Pittman, soprano Claudia Kitka, tubist Julian Dixon, hornist Cara Jones, and staff pianist Beverly Wanner. Admission is $10 general and $8 for students and seniors. The program will include a potpourri of contemporary works for winds, voice and piano, including Paganini's Concert-Piece for bassoon, horn and orchestra, Gernot Wolfgang's Three Short Stories for clarinet and bassoon, Bill Douglas' Suite Cantando for clarinet, bassoon and piano, and songs by composer Betty Roe.

The Festival closes with a World Music performance on Saturday, March 21 at 8:00pm in the Music Recital Hall, featuring Balinese Music and Dance with San Francisco's Gamelan Sekar Jaya. Gamelan Sekar Jaya is a fifty member ensemble of musicians and dancers, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, that specializes in the performing arts of Bali, Indonesia. It is recognized internationally as “the finest Balinese gamelan ensemble outside of Indonesia.” Gamelan Sekar Jaya comprises several kinds of gamelan orchestras and dancers. Each orchestra is com­posed of bronze metallophones and/or bamboo marimbas, usually combined with tuned gongs, drums and flutes. True to the Balinese tradition, the musicians learn the individual layers of melody and complex, interlocking figuration directly from master Balinese musicians, without the aid of notation. Sekar Jaya’s dancers learn the elaborate choreographies of Balinese dance in a similar manner, though intensive training with resident dance directors. In various combinations, these musical ensembles and associated dancers have presented over four hundred concerts in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, bringing an understanding and appreciation of Balinese performing arts to diverse audiences.

 


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