Woodwind Chamber and Brassworks! Open Saturday Music at Gustavus

The Department of Music at Gustavus will open the final weekend of student performances with a 10:30 a.m. Woodwind Chamber Ensembles Concert on Saturday, December 10, followed at 1:30 p.m. by the annual Brassworks! concert. Both performances will be presented in Jussi Björling Recital Hall and will be free of charge.

Karrin Meffert-Nelson will lead the Gustavus Chamber Winds to open the morning concert with the fourth movement of Charles Gounod’s Petite Symphonie and Gordon Jacob’s Old Wine in New Bottles. They will be followed by the Woodwind Quintet coached by Sarah Erickson Lume. The Quintet will be joined by Michael McKenzie on tambourine for the Suite of Old Lettish Dances by Andrejs Jansons.

The Fyra Quartet, coached by Karrin Meffert-Nelson, will then go to the stage and perform movements from Bernhard Crussel’s Quartetto and Paul Harvey’s Quartet, followed by the Musik om Tre, a clarinet trio coached by Rena Kraut and performing the Allegro movement from Beethoven’s Trio in C Major, Op. 87.

Two saxophone quartets are set to perform but the program was not ready at publication time. The final performance of the concert will be Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair, a traditional folk song arranged by Ricky Lombardo and performed by the Gustavus Flute Choir directed by James DeVoll.

The Gustavus Brass Choir will present Brassworks!, also free and open to the public, beginning at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, December 10, in Jussi Björling Recital Hall. The Brass Choir is directed by Trygve R. Skaar.

The 11-member Brass Choir’s program will include a number of works demonstrating the wide range of music written or arranged for brass choir. It includes O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort (O Eternity, you word of thunder) by Johann Sebastian Bach, Royal Fanfare by Josquin Des Pres, Salvation is Created by Paul Chesnokov, Flourish by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Goin’ Home theme from Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony, Andre Campra’s Rigaudon in F Major, and the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem. 

The Saturday, December 10 Woodwind Chamber Concert will begin at 10:30 a.m., followed by the Brassworks! concert at 1:30 p.m. in Jussi Björling Recital Hall. Both performances are free and open to the public.