WestConn Announces Music & Theater Events

To Close Out 2006-07 Academic Year

DANBURY —  Western Connecticut State University will showcase the rich variety of student talents in instrumental music, theatre and opera in a full schedule of performing arts events to be held in the first half of May.

Musical performances will include a concert by the university’s acclaimed saxophone quartets, a year-end Student Celebration by the WCSU Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble, and a concert of classical music presented by the WCSU Orchestra. The university’s Play Production class will offer two performances of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and the theatre arts department will join with LaMar Productions to stage a children’s theatre production of Free to Be You and Me.

Students from WestConn’s music and theatre departments will combine their talents for two performances of the light one-act opera The Impresario by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

All performances will be open to the public, and admission will be free unless otherwise noted. The following performing arts events will be featured at WestConn during May:

*Saxophestivus, a collaboration by the university’s three saxophone quartets, will perform at 2 pm on Sunday, May 6, in Ives Concert Hall in White Hall, 181 White Street.

The concert will feature Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor by J.S. Bach as well as works by Eugene Bozza and Orlando Gibbons. Donations to the music department will be accepted.

For more information, call 837-8350.

May 6, Saxophestivus, 2 pm, free (donations accepted), collaboration by university’s 3 saxophone quartets, program to feature Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, also works of Eugene Bozza & Orlando Gibbons;

*The WestConn School of Visual and Performing Arts will present The Impresario in an English-language adaptation produced and directed by senior music and theater major Brenda Huggins. The production by WCSU’s music and theatre arts students will transport the setting of Mozart’s light opera to New York’s Metropolitan Opera House in the 1930s, re-created in a set design by senior theatre major Becky Olson.

The 40-minute production will be staged at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, May 7, in Ives Concert Hall, 181 White Street; and at 7 pm on Saturday, May 12, in the Ballroom of the Westside Campus Center on the westside campus, Lake Avenue Extension in Danbury.

The production is supported by the school’s Student/Faculty Collaborative Grant. For more information, call 837-8486.

*The WCSU Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble will perform “A Student Celebration” concert at 8 pm on Wednesday, May 9, in Ives Concert Hall.

The concert will feature works by Leonard Bernstein, Frank Ticheli and Charles Young, as well as a performance by senior Ashley Williams of Cecile Chaminade’s Concertino for Flute and Band. Six student conductors will direct the ensembles.

Donations to the music department will be accepted. For more information, call 837-8350.

*The WCSU Play Production class will present Sexual Perversity in Chicago at 8 pm on Thursday, May 10, and at 9 pm on Saturday, May 12.

Both performances will be in the Reimold Theatre in Berkshire Hall, on Osborne Street. The play contains strong adult content and is not recommended for children.

For more information, call 482-3399.

*The WCSU theatre arts department, in conjunction with LaMar Productions, will present Free to Be You and Me at 2 pm on Saturday, May 12, in the Berkshire Theatre.

The adaptation of the 1970s work about tolerance, individuality and self-acceptance is a family-oriented production. General admission tickets will be $8.

For more information, call Linda Randazzo at 778-3344.

*The WCSU Orchestra will perform a concert of classical selections from Mozart and Arcangelo Corelli at 3 pm on Sunday, May 13, in Ives Concert Hall in White Hall, 181 White Street.

The program will include Corelli’s Concerto Grosso Opus 6 No. 1 for strings and continuo, and Mozart’s Serenade for Winds No. 11 and Piano Concerto No. 23, K 488. Senior Whitney Nelson will be featured on piano.

Donations to the music department will be accepted. For more information, call 837-8350.