The Northern Illinois University School of Music welcomes guest performers Ensemble P/4 for a concert of contemporary music at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 16.
Ensemble P/4 consists of two pianists and two percussionists, all members of music faculties at universities in Florida. They are Thad Anderson (percussion professor at University of Central Florida), Marja Kerney (percussion professor at Stetson University), Rose Grace (piano professor at Bethune-Cookman University) and Kristie Born (piano professor at Stetson University).
The group’s performance will include two works by noted composer Zackary Browning, emeritus professor of the University of Illinois School of Music.
Browning’s works have been described as “propulsive, giddy, rocking … a rush of cyclic riffs and fractured meters” (The New York Times).
The program includes his “Venus Notorious” for two pianos and percussion and “Vibrations of Hope” for two pianos, which was written as a response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings of 2012. Pianists Grace and Born performed the premiere of “Vibrations of Hope” this past January. The first half of the evening’s program will also include a performance of “Red Tree, Yellow Sky,” composed by Bill Ryan, professor of composition at Grand Valley State University.
Concluding the evening’s performance will be Béla Bartók’s exhilarating masterpiece, “Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion.”
The concert will take place in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall, which is accessible to all. Admission is free, and the public is invited to attend. For more information, call (815) 753-1546 or email lslater@niu.edu.
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