Famous music from jazz and classical artists will reverberate through the Concert Hall when the woodwind ensemble, made up of Dixie State College students, performs on Nov. 19.
The season of music performance has begun, and the first chamber concert of the year will be at 7:30 p.m.
The concert will showcase the groups that make up the woodwind ensemble, along with a piano ensemble.
The Flute Choir, the Piano Choir and the DSC Saxophone Ensemble are directed by Candace Behrmann, Chris Giles and Rhonda Rhodes, respectively.
The students who will perform meet two hours each week to practice as a group. Rhodes said they spend most of their time rehearsing on their own and are all full-time students.
“These students are very, very busy performers,” Rhodes said.
At least four students are serving double duty and performing with both the Saxophone Ensemble and the Flute Choir.
Kayla Taylor, a junior psychology major from St George, is one of those four.
“I’m super excited for the Gershwin Preludes that the sax choir is playing,” Taylor said. “Also, Ian Clarke’s ‘Zig Zag Zoo’ that the flute choir is playing because it uses extended techniques.”
The extended techniques include flutter tonguing and whale noises. “Zig Zag Zoo” also has audience participation, Taylor said.
The ensembles will feature music by famous composers from the last few centuries.
“The Sax Ensemble will play music from Gordon Goodwin, George Gershwin, Modest Mussorgsky and Bach,” Rhodes said. “The Flute Choir will feature Debussy, Mozart and Reinhold Gliere.”
The famous German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach lived and composed in the 1700s, and the less-well-known Russian Modest Mussorgsky lived during the mid-to-late 1800s.
George Gershwin lived from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. Gordon Goodwin is alive today and leads an 18-piece big band jazz ensemble known as Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band.
“I’m most excited about our performance of George Gershwin’s piece ‘Three Preludes,'” Rhodes said. “We have the recording of his interpretation on the piano, and we are matching it as best we can. It lends itself really coolly to saxophones.”
The concert will be in the Dolores Dore Eccles Fine Arts Center Concert Hall.
General Admission will be $5, and students and faculty members with school ID will be admitted for $1. Tickets are available for purchase in advance online.
