Crane Faculty Welcome Composer Dan Welcher, Perform His Works on Feb. 27

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Guest composer Dan Welcher will visit SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music in celebration of its 125th anniversary, with a concert of his works on Feb. 27.

POTSDAM, NY (02/16/2012)(readMedia)-- SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music will welcome back a distinguished composer with ties to the College for a weeklong residency and a special tribute concert of his works. The performance of Dan Welcher's compositions is part of the ongoing concert series marking the 125th anniversary of The Crane School of Music.

The concert will be offered at 7:30 p.m. on Monday Feb. 27, in the Sara M. Snell Music Theater at Crane.

The concert will feature prefatory comments by guest composer Dan Welcher and Crane professors performing some of his well-known works. These pieces will include "Abeja Blanca," "Dante Dances," "Hauntings," "Mill Songs: Four Metamorphoses after Schubert," "Reversible Jackets: Exercises in Conjugal Counterpoint" and "Woodwind Quintet No. 1."

The Crane faculty members who will perform at the concert include Lorraine Yaros Sullivan (mezzo-soprano), Anna Hendrickson (English horn), Kathryn Sherman (piano), Julianne Kirk Doyle (clarinet), Carol Lowe (bassoon), Kenneth Andrews (flute), Raphael Sanders (clarinet) and Kelly Drifmeyer (horn). Charles Guy will also conduct the Crane Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble in Welcher's 1986 work, "Hauntings."

A reception with Welcher and the performers will follow in the Snell Theater lobby immediately after the concert.

This concert is free, and the public is invited to attend.

Additionally, Welcher's wind band works may be heard on Thursday, March 1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Helen M. Hosmer Concert Hall. The Crane Symphonic Band will perform "Laboring Songs" and the Crane Concert Band will present "Minstrels of the Kells." Welcher will also be in attendance, having worked with all of the Crane bands during the week.

About the guest composer:

Dan Welcher is an American composer, conductor and music educator. He trained as a pianist and bassoonist while attending The Crane School of Music for two years, before going on to earn degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. He joined the Louisville Orchestra as its principal bassoonist in 1972 and remained there until 1978, teaching composition and theory at the University of Louisville. He became affiliated with the artist faculty of the Aspen Music Festival in 1976, where he taught bassoon and composition for 14 years. He accepted a faculty position at the University of Texas in 1978, creating the New Music Ensemble there and serving as assistant conductor of the Austin Symphony Orchestra from 1980 to 1990. It was in Texas that his career as a conductor began to flourish and he has led the premieres of more than 120 new works since 1980. He now holds the Lee Hage Jamail Regents Professorship in Composition at the School of Music at UT, where he is serving as the director of the New Music Ensemble. Welcher has won numerous awards and prizes from institutions such as the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Reader's Digest/Lila Wallace Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy, the Ligurian Study Center in Bogliasco, Italy, the American Music Center and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). His orchestral music has been performed by more than 50 orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony and the Atlanta Symphony. He currently lives in Bastrop, Texas, and travels extensively to conduct and teach.

To find out more about the other special events planned for the 125th anniversary celebration of The Crane School of Music, visit www.potsdam.edu/academics/Crane/125years.

Founded in 1886, SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music has a long legacy of excellence in music education and performance. Life at Crane includes an incredible array of more than 300 recitals, lectures and concerts presented by faculty, students and guests each year. The Crane School of Music is the State University of New York's only All-Steinway institution, and is celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2011-12.

-www.potsdam.edu/crane-