Contact: Kay Fike Jones
Mississippi State's Percussion Ensemble will be joined by a West Point sixth-grade music class for an April 6 university concert.
The free program, to begin at 7:30 p.m. in the McComas Hall theater, also will feature three faculty members from MSU's music education department.
The diverse presentation includes "Slap Shift, or Music for Six Hand-Drumming Fanatics"; "Quartet for Paper Bags"; and "Junk Funk," music created with found objects such as a cardboard box, tin cans and flower pots. "Afro-Amero," which highlights traditional West African rhythms, will be a composition based on African chants, ceremonial dances and popular music of Ghana.
The ensemble concludes the program in collaboration with the 30-member Orff Performance Class from West Point's Oak Hill Academy. Teacher Susie Marshall's sixth-grade musicians will join the MSU students for "Three Shona Songs," an arrangement of traditional marimba music from Zimbabwe.
The three featured music education faculty members include associate professor Lana Johns, assistant professor Gail Levinsky and professor Linda Karen Smith.
Johns will direct the MSU Flute Choir in a Revolutionary War period "Fife and Drum Medley." Smith will give a mezzo soprano performance of "Three Puerto Rican Songs," an arrangement of a poem by Ester Feliciano Mendoza, while Levinsky, on soprano saxophone, presents "Rendezvous," a Latin/jazz composition by Dave Samuels of the music group Spyro Gyra.
The seven-member Percussion Ensemble was founded in 1995 by its director, music education instructor Robert J. Damm. The seven-member group has performed in numerous concerts, festivals, workshops, and clinics throughout the state with a mix of classical, contemporary and ethnic music.