Contact: Margaret Kovar
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Current and former faculty members of Mississippi State's music department will premier song and piano selections during a Thursday [Feb. 21] campus concert.
Instructor Karen Murphy and former colleague Kathy Kessler-Price will perform Jonathan Kolm's commissioned work, "Sanctuaries of Heaven and Earth."
Free and open to all, the program begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Harrison Auditorium of the Giles Architecture Building.
A teacher of piano, music theory and composition at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, the composer will discuss his work during a 7 p.m. presentation in the auditorium. Kolm has created works for orchestra, choir, piano, voice and a variety of chamber ensembles, several of which have been recognized with national awards and prizes.
Murphy, a faculty member since 2007, is the music department's collaborative pianist coordinator. Other works she has premiered include Emma Lou Diemer's "Shift and Evensong" for choir and organ and Lori Laitman's song-cycle "The Blood Jet" for soprano and piano.
Kessler-Price taught voice, vocal literature and pedagogy at MSU prior to joining the Westminster Choir College of Rider University. In addition to voice and graduate voice science, she teaches pedagogy and research at the Princeton, N.J., institution. She has appeared at such distinguished venues as the White House, Kennedy Center Concert Hall and National Museum for Women in the Arts.
For more information on the concert, contact Murphy at 662-325-6641.