WEST LIBERTY, W.Va., Oct. 14, 2015 — West Liberty University welcomes talented high school musicians to campus for its annual Oct. 15 – 17 Tri-State Select Honor Festival. Two free public concerts also are part of the Festival.
The annual Prism Concert at 7 p.m., Friday, Oct. 16 begins in College Hall and proceeds to the Interfaith Chapel. The concert will feature the WLU Singers and selected instrumental soloists.
Music lovers can also enjoy a second concert at 2 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 17 at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, Elm Grove. This concert will feature the WLU Singers and select high school singers who are taking part in this week’s Tri-State Honor Festival. Music of American composers and festival composer in residence, Daniel Gawthrop will be featured at the St. Vincent concert.
Gawthrop is the recipient of over 100 commissions to write original music. He served for three years as Composer-in-Residence to the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra (Virginia) and is the recipient of four grants from The Barlow Endowment for Musical Composition.
He has been commissioned by dozens of institutions including the American Choral Directors Association through their prestigious Raymond Brock Memorial series, and has had works première in the Concert Hall of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Salt Lake City Mormon Tabernacle, and Washington National Cathedral. His choral pieces have been performed and recorded by such eminent ensembles as The United States Air Force Singing Sergeants, the Gregg Smith Singers, the Turtle Creek Chorale, the Paul Hill Chorale, the American Boychoir, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Cathedral Choral Society (of Washington National Cathedral) and literally hundreds of other groups in the U.S. and abroad.
Several of Gawthrop’s pieces will be on the repertoire, and students will have the opportunity to collaborate side-by-side with this contemporary composer.
The Tri-State Select Honor Festival offers deserving student musicians from the Upper Ohio Valley the opportunity to grow in intensive workshop-type ensembles. Students work for three days with clinicians of the highest caliber at West Liberty University, according to Dr. Scott Glysson, WLU director of choral activities and Tri-State Choral Host.
For more information on the WLU music program, please visit westliberty.ed/music or call Glysson at 304-336-8090.