Works by Grammy Award-winning composer Libby Larsen will be the focus of a special concert Friday (March 16) at Bowling Green State University’s Kobacker Hall. Larsen is in residence at BGSU this week as the McMaster Professor in Vocal and Choral Studies.
The free concert, at 8 p.m. in Kobacker Hall, will feature works by Larsen including vocal and piano duo selections and “She piped for us” with the University Women’s Chorus.
Larsen’s residency will include meetings with composition students, a visit to a theory class, coaching of vocal and piano duos, sessions with the University Women’s Chorus and a speech with a question-and-answer session at 2:30 p.m. Friday in Bryan Recital Hall, also in Moore Musical Arts Center.
Larsen is one of America’s most performed living composers. She has created a catalogue of over 400 works spanning virtually every genre from intimate vocal and chamber music to massive orchestral works and 12 operas. Widely recorded, she is constantly sought after for commissions and premieres by major artists, ensembles and orchestras around the world, and has established a permanent place for her works in the concert repertory.
A vigorous, articulate advocate for the music and musicians of our time, in 1973 Larsen co-founded the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers Forum, which has become an invaluable aid for composers in a transitional time for American arts. A former holder of the Papamarkou Chair at John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, Larsen has also held residencies with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony and the Colorado Symphony.
Her visit is supported through funding established for the endowed professorship by Helen and the late Harold McMaster in spring 2000. Helen McMaster, a longtime Perrysburg resident, has supported the arts at BGSU for many years. In 1992 she served as honorary chair of Bowling Green’s Campaign for the Arts, to which the McMasters donated $150,000.
Generous friends of BGSU, she and her husband previously donated to programs in music, business, science and the Center for Photochemical Sciences. They established the Harold and Helen McMaster Professor of Photochemical Sciences position in 1993, helped to purchase a photoelectron microscope for the center in 1992 and gave the University a $1 million gift for the McMaster Endowment Fund, which supports the chemical sciences, in 1985. Guest artists are nominated by college professors in vocal, choral or opera to be approved for visits to the campus.
All events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Christopher Scholl, associate professor of music performance studies, at 419-372-2287.