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| One World Consort at UW-River Falls |
© Andrea Canter
Earth Day
is coming next month and at least one music ensemble plans to celebrate
"Mother Earth" with a cross-cultural, cross-genre concert that seeks
to "promote the preservation of Earth's natural resources and the
indigenous music traditions of world cultures."
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| Dave Milne leads rehearsal |
The April
27th concert at the Lake Harriet Spiritual Community in southwest Minneapolis was
originally proposed by saxophonist/composer/educator David Milne for the Twin
Cities Jazz Society's "Jazz From J to Z" concert season. Things didn't
work out for the concert season, but the show must go on! Milne's been hard at
work re-arranging Fred Sturm's "Mother Earth," a suite based on
Sturm's own earlier work, Migrations: One
World, Many Musics. Sturm, head of the jazz program at Lawrence
Conservatory, based the suite on indigenous folk music from throughout the
world, using ethnomusicological research, transcriptions of authentic field
recordings, and subsequent arranging, orchestration, and in many cases
“re-composition” of the original music.
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| Eric Graham |
Milne,
professor of music at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and acclaimed
jazz artist and composer, pulled together the One World Consort, an amalgam of
a jazz quartet (Milne on assorted reeds and whistles, Mary Louise Knutson on
piano, Eric Graham on acoustic and electric bass, and Craig Hara on drums and
percussion) and the classically inclined Four Voices String Quartet (Laurie
Petruconis and Allison Ostrander on violins, Susan Janda on viola, and Rebecca
Arons on cello). The Consort performed the American premiere of Mother Earth on Earth Day 2012 at the
University of Wisconsin-River Falls, and now is preparing to celebrate Earth
Day 2014 at the April 27th concert.
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| Laurie Petruconis |
The Consort
held the first of two rehearsals on the River Falls
campus last Sunday. Even in this "raw state," it was an evening of unforgettable
music, bringing the essence of jazz, classical and folks traditions into one
soaring suite of sounds, harmonious and dissonant, through-composed and
improvised. You might hear something as familiar as a snippet of Bach, and as
unfamiliar as Dave Milne's penny whistle an ocarina. See the One World Consort
event page on Facebook
and mark your calendar for April 27th (7:30 pm). It's what the world needs now.
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| Dave Milne and the Four Voices String Quartet, rehearsal in River Falls |
