Guitarist Starobin and composer Crumb
to perform for Lecture-Concert Series

Feb. 19, 2007 -- Guitarist David Starobin and composer George Crumb will perform with ASU faculty and students Thursday, March 1, on the campus of Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. The performance is part of ASU's Lecture-Concert Series.

Their performance, “A Concert of Music by George Crumb,” begins at 7:30 p.m. in Riceland Hall, Fowler Center, 201 Olympic Drive. The concert is free and open to the public. Co-sponsors are the Lecture-Concert Series, the ASU Department of Music, the ASU Piano Club, and the Society of Composers, Inc., Student Chapter.

(see also NewsRelease about Starobin in concert, Feb. 27)

Works to be performed include “Black Angels” for electric string quartet, “An Idyll for the Misbegotten” for flute and percussion, “Three Early Songs” for voice and piano, “Sonata for Solo Violoncello,” “Easter Dawning” for handbells ensemble (originally carillon), and “Mundus Canis” for guitar and percussion. Performers will include ASU faculty members Matthew Carey, Lauren Schack Clark, Joe Bonner, and Craig Collison, as well as guest artists Jonathan Kirkscey, the Rockefeller String Quartet, David Starobin, and George Crumb himself. The ASU Ringers ensemble, directed by Ellis Julien, will also perform.

George Crumb is a contemporary American composer and Pulitzer Prize winner. He is known for his innovative methods of composition, including his use of numerology and new playing techniques to generate keyboard and chamber music pieces, like “Black Angels” (1970) for string quartet.

Other works include “Makrokosmos,” a massive and detailed exploration of piano sounds, and his composition, “An Idyll for the Misbegotten,” for flute and percussion.

Crumb attended college in his hometown of Charleston, W. Va., at Mason College of Music and went on to earn his master’s degree at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, where he studied under Eugene Weigel.

He then studied with Boris Blacher at Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik (1054-55). He subsequently studied with Ross Lee Finney at Michigan, earning his doctorate in 1959. From 1965-95, he taught composition at the University of Pennsylvania. He has earned two Guggenheim grants, the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for “Echoes of Time and the River,” the 1989 Prince Pierre de Monaco Gold Medal, and six honorary degrees.

For more details, please contact Dr. Gil Fowler, associate dean for The Honors College, at 870-972-2308 or via e-mail at gfowler@astate.edu  or visit http://honors.astate.edu.

The Lecture-Concert Series presents diverse programs to enrich the cultural life of the campus, community, and region.

To nominate a speaker or presenter for a future Lecture-Concert Series event, please contact one of the committee members listed on The Honors College web site, listed under the heading of Lecture-Concert.

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