Shorter College Debuts New Music Series

The Shorter College Department of Music will debut its New Music Series at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 17, in Brookes Chapel on the Shorter College campus. The event is open to the public at no charge.

The New Music Series is devoted entirely to works for voice and piano by 20th and 21st century composers. The goal of the program is to provide more opportunities for the students of Shorter College to experience and perform contemporary art music, according to Assistant Professor of Music Matthew Hoch, who is coordinating the event.

The debut concert will feature works written in the past 100 years, with special emphasis on the past 20 years. The two halves of the program are devoted to works for keyboard and works for voice, respectively, beginning with two of the founding fathers of modern music: Oliver Messiaen and Arnold Schoenberg. Also in the program are works by Shorter College professors Sam Baltzer and Linda Lister and sophomore Thomas Williams, who is majoring in piano performance. All works will be performed by Shorter College music faculty and students.

The first New Music Series commission has already been contracted for debut in the fall of 2008. The hallmark of this series will be a sequence of world-premiere commissions from up-and coming composers that will be performed and recorded by the faculty and students of Shorter College's music program. "It is our hope that this series will, over time, create a rich body of published and recorded literature that will nurture the students of Shorter College, enrich the audiences of Northwest Georgia, and create significant contributions to the canon of American art song, keyboard music and choral repertoire," Dr. Hoch said.

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