Name: Sean Fleming
Start: 2015-05-25T17:00:00
Location: Camden Opera House

Artist: Sean Fleming
Date: 05/03/12
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: Studzinski Auditorium, Bowdoin College
City: Brunswick
Venue phone: (207) 798-4141
Country: United States
Admission: free
Age restrictions: All Ages
Box office: (207) 798-4141
Notes: The Bowdoin Chorus and Mozart Mentors Orchestra, under the direction of Anthony Antolini, will present the New England premiere of Karl Jenkins’ Requiem on Thursday, May 3, and Friday, May 4, at 7:30 p.m. at Studzinski Recital Hall on the Bowdoin College campus. The concerts are free and tickets are not required. The theme of the concert is “Death and Heaven.” In addition to the Jenkins Requiem the chorus will perform four spirituals arranged by William Dawson about preparing to go to heaven or imagining what it will be like. The decision to perform the Jenkins Requiem was made shortly after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster hit Japan on March 11, 2011. The Jenkins work melds the traditional western Requiem text (a funeral service) with Japanese haiku on the subject of death. It will be performed as a memorial to those who lost their lives in that disaster. Jenkins is a Welsh composer who began his musical career as an oboist, then attended the Royal Academy of Music in London. For much of his early career he was known as a jazz-rock musician. He then became a successful composer of music for television advertisements. His Requiem was composed in 2005. The haiku movements are sung in Japanese by a women’s chorus and are accompanied by the shakuhachi, an ancient Japanese bamboo flute. Virtuoso shakuhachi player Ralph Samuelson of New York City will be the featured soloist. Samuelson was trained in the classical tradition of the Kinko School under the tutelage of the late Living National Treasure Goro Yamaguchi, as well as by Shudo Yamato and Kodo Araki V. He began shakuhachi studies in 1969 as a graduate student in the World Music Program at Wesleyan University and studied traditional music in Tokyo in the 1970s under the guidance of musicologist Fumio Koizumi. Samuelson has performed in leading concert venues in New York, around the United States, and in Europe and Asia and has recorded for many labels. Since 1976 Samuelson has also worked as a foundation professional facilitating and supporting international cultural exchange, and from 1991 to 2008 he served as director of the Asian Cultural Council, a foundation supporting exchanges in the arts and humanities between the United States and Asia. The Requiem is scored for chorus, female soloists, shakuhachi, two French horns, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. The Bowdoin Chorus is composed of students, alumni, faculty, staff and Brunswick area community members. The Mozart Mentors Orchestra, in its second season, is made up of Maine string teachers and their top students, ranging in age from 10 to 18. For more information, call 725-3347, visit www.bowdoin.edu/music or e-mail aantolin@bowdoin.edu.

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