Annual American Composers Update

Dan Locklair

SAI Friend of the Arts Dan Locklair, Composer-in-Residence and Professor of Music at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, is on the city's Arts Council Board of Trustees. In 1997 articles about him appeared in Choral Journal (May), Symphony Magazine (Jan.-Feb.), and The American Organist (Jan.). In 1997 Vatican Radio aired a program about him, broadcast in Europe, October 1997. Among works on NPR were Three Christmas Motets and Holy Canticles, with The Bel Canto Company; and Brief Mass, with The Choral Art Society, of Portland, ME. In 1997 he was a guest at festivals and panels in North Carolina and at the Czech Festival of Choral Art in Prague. He has a commission for an SSA choir work for the Greensboro (NC) Youth Chorus and has won another ASCAP Award.

Premieres

In 1997 Concerto Grosso, commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, for harpsichord, strings, and percussion, was heard first with the Lohja (Finland) Orchestra, Jukka Tiensuu, harpsichord and conductor (Jan.); and then with the Kansas City (MO) Chamber Orchestra, under Bruce Sorrell, and harpsichordist Marie Rubis Bauer (Feb.). Also in 1997 Windows of Comfort (Two Organbooks), commissioned by the First Presbyterian Church, Topeka, KS, premiered there, with Bauer (Apr.); and then at AGO conventions in Little Rock, AR (Organbook I, June) and Medford, OR (Organbook I, July), both with Marilyn Keiser; and at the First Presbyterian Church, Binghamton, NY (Organbook II, Sept.) with Locklair. Jubilate Deo, version for SATB choir, brass, percussion, and organ, commissioned by the Choral Art Society; Community Music Project, Jamestown, NY; First United Methodist Church, Akron, OH; and St. Hugo of the Hills Catholic Church, Bloomfield Hills, MI, had premieres by each church in fall 1997.

Performances

Heard in Kansas City, MO was Creation's Seeing Order (Prelude for Orchestra), with the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra, under Uriel Segal, January 1998. At the Czech Festival of Choral Art, Jan Ocetek led Vox Iuvenalis in Poems 'N Pairs and Three Christmas Motets (II), June 1997. The Appalachian State University/Phi Mu Alpha Contemporary Music Festival featured Constellations, for organ and percussion; Hues, for orchestra (II); In The Almost Evening, Treble Woes, for treble voices and piano; and Windswept (the trees) and Dona Nobis Pacem, for a cappella SATB choir, April 1997. Alexander Finch, organ, played Rubrics at Cartmel Priory, England, August 1997. At the Musica 97 Festival, Strasbourg, France, Tiensuu played Cluster's Last Stand (on the ground), September 1997.

Publications

Windows of Comfort (Two Organbooks); E. C. Kerby, Ltd. (Ricordi), 1997. For Amber Waves; five SATB a cappella choirs; Boosey & Hawkes, 1997.

Recordings

Dream Steps (A Dance Suite for Flute, Viola, and Harp); Mallarme Chamber Players; Capstone Records Chamber Music for Harp, Flute, and Strings CD CPS 8638, June 1997. The Breakers Pound (A Dance Suite for Harpsichord); Elaine Funaro; Gasparo Records Into the Millennium CD GSCD-331, July 1997. Holy Canticles; Three Christmas Motets; Instant Culture; Break Away; Dona Nobis Pacem; Bel Canto Company, David Pegg, conductor; Gasparo Records Choral Music of Dan Locklair, Vol. 2 CD, January 1998.

Further Information

For more complete information, see Dan Locklair's entry in our Composers Bureau Online.