The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Edgewood College offers two promising band and choral concerts this coming weekend. Plus, a FREE concert of new music for harp and cello is Friday at noon

ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, held from 12:15 to 1 p.m. in the Landmark Auditorium of the historic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Meeting House of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features harpist Linda Warren and cellist Carol Wessler in the music of Harper Tasche and Laura Zaerr.

By Jacob Stockinger

Two promising band and choral concerts are on tap this weekend at Edgewood College.

Both will take place in the St. Joseph Chapel, 1000 Edgewood College Drive.

FRIDAY

The Edgewood College Concert Band, under the direction of Walter Rich (below), will perform a benefit concert for Luke House on Friday at 7 p.m.

Admission is FREE with a freewill offering to benefit the Luke House community meal program.

Included on the program are Flourish for Wind Band by Ralph Vaughan Williams; “Serenity” by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo; “Chorale and Capriccio” by Caesar Giovanini; “Jerusalem” by Hubert Parry; “I’m Seventeen Come Sunday” by Percy Grainger; “Daybreak” by Carl Strommen and “Children of Gaia” by Robert Sheldon.

The Music Department at Edgewood College has hosted benefit concerts for Luke House since 1994.

SUNDAY

Two vocal ensembles will perform a concert at 2:30 p.m., Sunday in St. Joseph Chapel. Admission is FREE.

Featured will be the Chamber Singers (below), under the direction of Sergei Pavlov (center at the bottom of the stairs). The group has just returned from performances at the International Sacred Music Festival in Quito, Ecuador.

The Chamber Singers will perform excerpts from the Mass in F by Domenico Zipoli; “Usnijze mi, usnij” by Polish composer Henryk Gorecki; “Holy, Holy” from the Gospel Mass by Robert Ray; and a Victor Johnson arrangement of “Bonse Aba,” a traditional Zambian work. Todd Hammes, adjunct faculty member in the Music Department, will assist on percussion.

Also performing will be the Women’s Choir (below top), under the direction of Kathleen Otterson (below bottom). The Women’s Choir will perform Israeli and Jewish folk songs, a spiritual, and the “Domine Deus” from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in G major, also featuring Victoria Gorbich on violin. (You can hear the glorious Bach piece performed in a YouTube video at the bottom.)