Swasey Chapel will be alive with the sounds of Organ as Professor William Osborne and friends will be performing a myriad of classical music.
The recital will be at 3 p.m. on Sunday (Feb. 6) in Swasey Chapel. The event is free and open to Denison Students as well as the general public.
Also featured at the event will be Professors Kristen Smith, Andy Carlson, and Jeremy Bradstreet.
The program will open with Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Fantasy and Fugue in G minor,” one of Bach’s most dramatic and substantial works for the organ, played to mark the 250th anniversary of his death.
Also on the afternoon’s program are Frank Martin’s “Sonata da Chiesa” for flute and organ, Josef Rheinberger’s “Suite for Violin and Organ,” and Don Locklair’s “Constellations” for organ and percussion.
Martin is a Swiss composer who wrote the sonata in 1938; Rheinberger was born in the 1800s in the tiny principality of Lichtenstein; and Locklair, a Wake Forest University faculty member, wrote the “Constellations” concerto in 1983.
Osborne, who also serves as director of choral organizations at Denison, joined the faculty in 1961. He has recorded two discs of Victorian-American organ music on the Orion label and a disc on the Crystal label.
In addition, he is a principal advisor to The New Grove Dictionary of American Music and has contributed 45 articles to it.
Osborne also has completed a critical edition of the organ works of Charles Ives to be published by Theodore Presser Company and a biography of Clarence Eddy, an American concert organist, which will be issued by the Organ Historical Society.
Smith, Carlson and Bradstreet are newcomers to the Denison University Music Department, joining this past fall.
Smith is a graduate of the University of Texas. She earned her master of music degree and also pursued her doctorate of musical arts degree in flute performance at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Additionally, she served as principal or co-principal flutist for the Opera Workshop, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Wind Symphony. She also has studied world music, particularly the music of Africa and Latin America.
Since his arrival at Denison University, Carlson has organized a Baroque Orchestra, the first in the history of the school. He earned his bachelor’s and master of music degrees at the University of Georgia and his doctorate of musical arts degree at the University of Iowa, where he studied violin performance and pedagogy.
Carlson has served as concertmaster of the University of Iowa’s Symphony Orchestra and its Chamber Orchestra. Additionally, he has done violin and string arrangements on recordings by R.E.M., Nanci Griffith and Grant McLennan. He has also performed on recordings by Vigilantes of Love, The University of Georgia Contemporary Chamber Ensemble and R.E.M.
Bradstreet earned his bachelor’s degree at Capital University and his master’s degree at the University of North Texas. A member of the Percussive Arts Society since 1991, he has played with numerous performance groups, including the Brass Band of Columbus, the Richardson Symphony, Jazz Central Big Band and Kalimb.
Bradstreet was the winner of the Outstanding Soloist Award at the Elmhurst Jazz Festival in 1995. Bradstreet has written articles for “Percussive Notes,” taught students privately and in the Hilliard Darby and Dublin High Schools.
For more information, contact the Denison University Music Department at (740) 587-6220.