ET CETERA
University Daily Kansan, February 21, 1985
Page 7
Symposium to offer musical forum
Event will feature well-known American composer
By PEGGY HELSEL Staff Reporter
Great creative geniuses are a tragic lot. In history's storybook, there's an entire chapter on poor souls who lived penniless and unappreciated, only to be discovered years after their deaths as the best thing to happen to art, literature or music.
Anyone who's seen the movie "Amadeus" knows what a pitiful state compass Wolfgang Mozart spent his final days in.
Fortunately for music students and faculty at the University of Kansas, a forum will be presented in which budding young composers can strut their stuff and gain their deserved recognition.
THAT FORUM IS the Symposium of Contemporary Music. The 26th annual event gives students and faculty a stage to present their own works and perform others. It runs Sunday through Wednesday.
A few imported stars will appear along with some of KU's own. The featured guests at the symposium will be the nationally known composer Elliott Schwartz and the Verdehr Trio.
Edward Mattila, professor of music theory and chairman of the symposium committee, said the symposium always centered on a well-known American composer. Past guests included noted composers Aaron Copland and Gunther Schuller.
The symposium provides an outlet for people to hear what's happening in contemporary music, Mattila said.
"THE IDEA IS for people to hear modern music so it's not so strange to them, to acquaint them with it," said Ullman. "It's said 'Ullman is for students primarily.'"
Schwartz, chairman of the music department at Bowdoin College in Maine, has composed more than 90 works for a variety of instrumental and electronic media. During the spring semester, he meets informally with students and performs some of his own works.
SCHWARTZ'T EARLIEST memories of performing were at his class recitals, during which he would play his compositions. He continued studying the piano, although he said he always felt more of a kinship with the composer than the performer.
"I began composing really very early with very small piano pieces when I was 8 or 9," Schwartz said. "I was fortunate to have a piano teacher who made us compose music as well as play."
He said recently in a telephone interview from his home in Brunswick, Maine, that he embarked on his career rather early.
"Every composer goes through an intensive experience of performing first," he said. "I was very serious about piano playing, but I also had music in the place of the composer rather than the performer."
"I decided I wanted to make my own music more than playing others'."
Schwartz said he became interested in electronic music in its infancy during the mid-1960s, when they were nearly impossible to obtain.
HE USED A tape recorder, varying the speeds, reversing the tape, and splicing the tape together. By using these primitive techniques, Schwartz made his music.
"Recording studios were few and far between," he said. "I started by using homemade equipment."
'Every composer goes through an intensive experience of performing first. I was very serious about piano playing, but I always put myself in the place of the composer rather than the performer. I decided I wanted to make my own music more than playing others'.
Once the wave of the future, the synthesizer is fast becoming outdated, and computers are the latest rage for producing contemporary music. But Schwartz remains loyal to the old ways, he said, still preferring to use a tape recorder to record music.
"Everything now is digital computers," he said. "That has occupied my attention less."
Schwartz said the contemporary composer had many more freedoms than Mozart did.
"The options open to composers are far greater," he said. "There's not just one accepted way or style. There's a huge variety of styles."
"THE AUDIENCE IS broader in their taste, more eclectic than in Mozart's time, or in any other generation."
The audience will get a sample of this variety at the symposium.
Mattila said, "The music covers the great gamut of moods and emotions, from serious to light to even humorous."
Performing at the symposium will be the University of Kansas Symphonic Band, conducted by Robert Foster, director of bands. Among works by John Philip Sousa and Leonard Bernstein, the band will perform a piece by Schwartz.
The band will kick off the symposium with its concert at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Crafton-Preyer Theatre in Murphy Hall. All events are free and open to the public.
The schedule for the symposium is:
- Monday, 10:30 a.m. a lecture-recital by John Boulton, professor of music-flute. He will discuss "New Music for Flute." The lecture will be in Swarthownt Recital Hall in Murphy Hall.
- Monday, 2:30 p.m., Swarthout,
a concert by students and faculty
of new works.
- Monday, 8 p.m., Swarthout, a concert featuring Schwartz, faculty and students.
- Tuesday; 2:30 p.m., Swarthout, Schwartz's lecture. "A Composer's View of Performance: Ritual, Space and Illusion." Schwartz said the lecture would focus on the ingredients that comprise a performance — the space where people perform, the way the music fills up the space and the manner in which the audience behaves.
- Wednesday, 2:30 p.m., the Verdehr Trio. The trio is composed of violinist Walter Verdehr, clarinetist Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr and pianist Gary Kirkpatrick.
- Tuesday, 8 p.m. Swarthout, a concert of choral and dance music by the KU Concert Choir and Chamber Choir. The concert will move to the Crafton-Preyer Theatre after intermission. The second half will feature members of the University Dance Company.
- Wednesday, 8 p.m., the closing concert, with Schwartz, faculty and students, and the KU Brass Choir.
Chamber music trio to perform first KU concert
By EVAN WALTER Staff Reporter
Although success in chamber music may seem rare in this century, the popularity of the Verdehr Trio, performing at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday in Swarthout Hall, in Murphy Hall, offers an exception.
The trio, which performs works by contemporary composers to audiences around the world, will be making its first appearance at the University of Kansas.
Walter Verdeh, violinist, his wife, Elsa Ludegw-Verdeh, clarinetist, and Gary Kirkpatrick, pianist, make up the trio. Verdeh and Ludegw-Verdeh teach at Michigan State University, and Kirkpatrick teaches at William Patterson University.
THE TRIO, FORMED in 1972, has toured annually around the United States and Canada, as well as 12 times across Europe. In 1981, they toured the world. Also, they have performed in the International Clarinet Congresses in
Vienna, Amsterdam, Sydney and London.
The group started after the Verdehls got married and decided they wanted to perform their music together. A number of people with the group before Kirkpatrick joined the tro five years ago.
"We perform some old repertoire, and we've received a lot of commissions, some by very prominent composers," Verdehr said in a telephone interview from East,Lansing, Mich.
THE TRIO HAS been received
well, according to Edward Mattila, professor of music theory and organizer of the symposium.
"We put them in on Wednesday afternoon because they couldn't get here earlier," he said, referring to how busy the triom members are with their performance schedule.
"The program is their own," Mattila said. "And all works are by living American composers, except for Berg."
The works the trio will perform, except for the piece by Alban Berg, the adagio from "Ka-
mmerkonzert," were created especially for the group.
The trio, however, doesn't play only contemporary music.
"We play all sorts of music," Verdehr said. "In fact, on the first of March we're playing music by Haydn and Beethoven in Lincoln Center."
Music of the 20th century is often distinguished by an array of innovations in rhythm and tonality, for example, often making it difficult to play, Verdehr said.
Dentists paint patients' teeth with designs
By GARY DUDA Staff Reporter
The originators of toot art are two
California dentists toot art taw
California dentists toot art taw
A unique kind of dentistry, tooth art, began in California and now has found its way to the Sunflower State.
The West Coast launches some of the latest is nothing to shatter about.
Clark said he and DeRo began to decorate dental ware in patients' spaces.
THE DESIGN IS painted onto a porcelain crown. A glaze is painted over the design, and the tooth is fired at 1,800 degrees. After the process is completed, little difference is visible in texture of the tooth and the design.
Clark said he usually put the design on the outer surface of the tooth behind the smile line. He said that for his teeth to look healthy, the person would have to lift back the lip.
Rolf Homan, owner of Sunflower Dental Studios in Topeka, said patients of his firm had been asked to design on many of their crowns.
Hoffman said he would paint whatever a person wanted, such as a semi truck or school mascots. One of the most difficult designs to paint, he was the state of Oklahoma on an Oklahoma man's front upper dentures.
"HE WOULD WEAR his spare dentures to football games." he said.
Hofman said the people that had tooth art done were just "normal people" who wanted to have a little fun.
"If they have to go to the expense of having the work, then why not have something a little personal on it?" he said.
Clark said he began painting designs on crowns for his patients to add some fun to dentistry.
When a patient comes in for a crown, Clark said, he offered to do the artwork at no additional charge. He also provided anything on a tooth, provided it fits.
"The design goes on only one-fourth of the tooth," Clark said. "They are very miniature paintings done with tremendous details."
Clark said he now was working on a water skier design. Although the design was still underway,
"You can even see its eyes and hair color," he said.
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