Musical fusion
Fort Lewis brings opposites together in two weekend concerts

New FLC Men’s Ensemble Director Chris Hendley and Durango Women’s Chorus Director Linda Mack will be performing their musical battle of the sexes, "He and She," this weekend. The two groups will join forces on a few pieces as well./Photo by David Halterman.

by Judith Reynolds

Startling or stunning, new fangled or old fashioned – it’s amazing what musical fare the Fort Lewis College Music Department puts out every semester. The department has already launched a cruise ship of unusual recitals. You may have missed the first ship-to-shore concerts in September, but this coming weekend more set sail. In addition to some musical standards, American classics for example, you’ll hear works you’ve never heard before.

On Friday night, Oct.12, the guys of the FLC Men’s Ensemble will sing “Stout Hearted Men.” The Durango Women’s Chorus will render a musical version of “Old Mother Hubbard.” Could any male-female combined program be more true to its theme: “He & She?”

Sunday night, the Percussion Ensemble will reprise some rare works the group has performed at least once before. Last spring the ensemble presented Lou Harrison’s Suite for Violin with American Gamelan with Mikylah Myers McTeer as soloist and “Mitsue” featuring English hornist Danielle Menapace. The ensemble also will present a slightly scaled down version of “La Koro Sutro,” Harrison’s remarkable 1973 work for chorus and gamelan orchestra. The full work, based on the Buddhist Heart Sutra, was performed at the May 2006 Animas Music Festival by the ensemble and the Durango Choral Society. If you missed any of those concerts in the past, don’t stay home and watch TV.

Having heard all of the above works in concert, I can attest to their beauty and rarity. When the Percussion Ensemble performed Harrison’s violin suite, they also recorded it. The piece begins with a low rumble of drums. Like a glider at sunrise after rain, the violin enters, soaring on long, haunting lines of melody. You’ll hear the magical introduction and then the entire work, a section titled “Threnody,” through an elegant air, three dance-like “Jhalas,” and a final, heartbreaking Chaconne.

When first performed here in Durango, McTeer was on the Fort Lewis music faculty. Unfortunately for us, this wonderful violinist and professor has moved on to a position at West Virginia University. McTeer and her husband, professional tubist Carson McTeer, can more easily access their East Coast commitments from Morgantown.

“I’m so excited to be joining John Pennington and his superb percussion ensemble for another performance of Harrison’s piece,” McTeer said in an e-mail exchange this week. “The Suite is gorgeous and unique – the pairing of violin with the American gamelan makes for a spectacular sonic experience.”

“In an interview last week, Pennington said the Music Department is flying Mikylah back to Durango just for this performance. “That’s how much we think of her as a musician – and how much we want to honor Lou Harrison.”

Professor of percussion studies at the Fort, Pennington has championed Harrison’s music for years. He’s not alone as the musical world has marked 2007 to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the birth of the American composer (1917-2003).

The Fort Lewis College Percussion Ensemble, from left, Philip Peters, Grayson Andrews, Katrina Hedrick, violin Soloist Mikylah Myers McTeer, John Pennington, Michael Pratt, Chance Harrison and Sean Statser will be performing a preview concert of the American Gamelan on Sunday at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church./Courtesy photo

“The October 14 preview concert brings together two of the three works Harrison wrote for the American gamelan orchestra,” Pennington said. A gamelan, Pennington added, is a musical ensemble that consists of a variety of instruments, many of them found or homemade. This Eastern form began in Indonesian villages long ago. In the ’60s, Harrison became fascinated by the beauty, complexity and expressiveness of this home-grown music.

“Harrison was one of the first American composers to successfully create a workable marriage between Eastern forms like the gamelan and Western forms,” Pennington said.

Enormously prolific, Harrison composed four symphonies, a Mass, many concertos, orchestral suites, an opera, a ballet, choral works, three works for American gamelan, and theater and film scores. When he died suddenly at age 86, he was on his way to a conference featuring some of his many compositions.

Pennington once played for Harrison: “It was back in 1991, and it was a moving experience. When I learned about his death in 2003, I decided to play more of his music.”

And so, apparently, has the musical world. Pennington and company are not alone. The ensemble has been invited to present the Harrison pieces at an international conference at the beginning of November. The Percussion Ensemble Association will convene in Columbus, Ohio. En route to Ohio, the Fort Lewis musicians will go on tour to various Midwestern colleges and universities, including the renowned music department at the University of Michigan. The Oct. 14 concert here in Durango is, in effect, a dress rehearsal, a preview for the tour and conference concert.

The big FLC musical weekend begins, however, with a very different performance, the “He and She” songfest Friday night at St. Mark’s. The FLC Men’s Ensemble under its new director, Christopher Hendley, will sing a variety of works from “plainchant based on the Catholic liturgy,” Hendley said in an interview last week, “to a 12th-century motet in German, part of Randall Thompson’s ‘Frostiana,’ and a piece based on a Robert Burns’ poem, ‘I’ll Kiss Thee Yet.’ We may be a small ensemble, but our goal is to do quality work and make the best sound we can.”

The women, directed by Linda Mack, FLC professor of vocal music, will open their part of the program with two works, in German and then Latin by Telemann and Franck, and then switch to American music.

Together the groups will sing a medley from “Annie Get Your Gun” and “Ain’t Got Time to Die,” one of those toe-tapping spirituals that takes on the tempo and energy of gospel. In this work, for the first time, you’ll hear Hendley as soloist. Born and educated in Georgia, Hendley brings a substantial bag of tricks to his new position on the music faculty at Fort Lewis. He has a doctorate in musicology, years of college-teaching experience and a trunk load of stage roles in both opera and American musical theater.

On Friday night, you’ll hear Hendley sing “Me,” Gaston’s song from “Beauty and the Beast.” And he will join Mack for an old Jule Styne battle-of-the-sexes duet, “Salzburg.”

“The song comes from the musical ‘Bells Are Ringing,’” said Hendley. “The show contains a subplot involving Linda’s character (Sue) and mine (Sandor) in which Sandor is attempting to con her out of her life savings. Sandor promises to take Sue to Salzburg, a city he’s never been to in his life. The comedy of the song lies in his laughable descriptions of life in Salzburg, ‘where the snitzel is high as an elephant’s eye.’”

Sounds like Don Giovanni in “Oklahoma.” Sounds like a great weekend of music. •