Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra
with pianist Susan Byykkonen

Pianist Susan Byykkonen of Calumet will perform Frederic Chopin's much-loved Piano Concerto No. 1 in a concert with the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra which also features the lush romantic music of Georges Bizet, Gabriel Fauré, and Hector Berlioz. This is the second of four special concerts in the KSO's "Season of Memories," celebrating Dr. Milton Olsson's final season as music director.

Susan Byykkonen is well known throughout the Keweenaw as both pianist and flutist, and was featured soloist in the KSO's performance of Jiri Antonin Benda's concerto in G minor for piano and orchestra in October 1998, as well as in numerous chamber music concerts at Michigan Tech during the past fifteen years. She is Associate Director for the Michigan Tech Concert Choir, which she has accompanied since 1994, and also performs frequently with Studio North Opera. A graduate of Cedarville University, Ohio, her teachers were Joan Luehrs and Connie Anderson.

"Susie and I have worked together with the KSO and the Concert Choir for many years," Olsson notes, "and to showcase her as a concert pianist is very meaningful for both of us." The Chopin concerto, epitomizing the expressive, emotion-driven music of the European romantic period, is a prized part of the piano repertoire. The orchestra will complement the Chopin with three works by 19th century French composers: Berlioz's "Marche Hongroise" from his opera "The Damnation of Faust," based on a Hungarian folk melody, Fauré's "Pavane for Orchestra," which Olsson describes as "a gorgeous, sumptuous piece of music that deserves its popularity," and, finally, Bizet's "L'Arlesienne Suite No. 1." Bizet , best known for his opera "Carmen," which is performed frequently in orchestral suites, similarly demonstrates his mastery of the orchestra in "L'Arlesienne." The alto saxophone solos in the "L'Arlesienne Suite" will be performed by Nicholas Enz.

General $15, Children age 18 and under $7. BUY TICKETS ONLINE Free to MTU students with ID.

Friday
December 5
McArdle Theatre
7:30 pm

Michigan Tech Concert Choir
Eyes to South America

Michigan Tech's ninety-voice Concert Choir, led by Dr. Milton Olsson, presents its annual concert, titled "Eyes to South America," featuring pieces prepared for the choir's 2009 concert tour to Argentina and Chile. The best of American music, as well as pieces from the home countries of the tour's audiences, all prepared with meticulous skill by the choir, promise to make this a rare evening.

Olsson's international tours always include a capsule of choral music from the United States. This year, the program features favorite compositions by David Dickau, Vincent Persichetti, and Morten Lauridsen, as well as several arrangements of American folk music and spirituals. "Brazeal Dennard's wonderful arrangement of the spiritual "Hush" has been on every one of our previous international tour programs," Olsson says. "When we performed "Hush" in St. Petersburg, Russia, the standing-room-only audience insisted that we sing it again, and again, and by the time we were singing it for the fourth time, the audience sang along. It doesn't get much better than that!"

Another moving choral work that has been a regular part of tour repertoire is Vincent Persichetti's "Song of Peace." "Whether in Russia, the Ukraine, China, or other nations that we have visited, the message of this music is paramount, the ultimate people-to-people communication," Olsson affirms.

Other selections include "Arroz con leche," a well-known folk song, in a special arrangement by Argentinean composer Carlos Gustavino. "Libertango" is a composition by Astor Piazzolla based on two of his favorite words, liberty and tango. Oscar Escalada's arrangement for choir and piano brings this dance to life. World renowned, Escalada is one of the leading figures in Argentinean choral music.

The Concert Choir makes international tours every three or four years, the most recent being to China in 2006. About eighty singers and guests are expected to make the Argentina/Chile tour next summer, presenting performances in cathedrals and concert halls in five major cities. The Choir will also tour cultural sites and parks, and meet and perform with musicians from the host countries.

General $10, Children age 18 and under $5. BUY TICKETS ONLINE Free to MTU students with ID.

Friday
November 14
Rozsa Center
7:30 pm

Seascape
by Edward Albee

Edward Albee’s comedy Seascape features two couples who meet by accident on a beach, one of them human and the other from a completely different world—in fact, a pair of giant sea lizards who swim ashore and stay to chat.

Left: Stephen Martin plays Leslie, one of the talkative sea lizards in Michigan Tech's production of "Seascape." Dieter Rudolph plays the astonished Charlie.

A real beach and ingenious sea-creature costumes, plus an array of special sound and lighting effects, bring Seascape vividly to life in this Visual & Performing Arts department production.

The talkative sea lizards signal one of Albee’s favorite themes: "As difference increases, reality fades.” Albee’s ground-breaking plays, which include “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” “The Zoo Story”, and “The American Dream,” focus on communication among characters quite different from one another. In Seascape, that includes people and lizards, and men and women.

As director Roger Held puts it, Seascape shows the difficulty and triumph of contact, of understanding, and the “how” of communication, as the humans decide what to do about frightening new creatures who happen to speak to them in perfectly civilized English.

The lizards, who’ve reached an advanced stage of evolution, are debating the possibility of life out of water. They’re excited by their first contact with land life, their first chance to ask urgent questions about what it’s really like. The humans, by contrast, are as stolid, ordinary, and inarticulate as we can imagine. The result? One critic calls it “humorous, eloquent, warm, with emotional and intellectual reverberations that linger long after the play has ended.”

The seashore provides a perfect situation for a play like this, Held observes. A seascape is dangerously exposed, always in flux, the land and water constantly shifting, everything shaping everything else. What better landscape to represent the human condition? “The shore looks simple but is actually complex, composed of a variety of rocks, shells, sands, and plants clinging tenaciously to a constantly changing environment. Some animals on the beach are soft, and give with the flow, while others are hard-shelled to survive the shocks. Some are both at different times. Animals on the shore have to be wary and adaptable as conditions change from warm and reassuring to wild and threatening.”

Capturing all this on stage is the job not just of the four actors, but also of Michigan Tech’s designers of scenery, costumes, lighting and sound effects. The six performances are a final exam for MTU’s student designers and technicians, many of them majors in Theatre and Entertainment Technology or Audio Production and Technology, whose creative solutions to the play’s many technical and artistic challenges will be on display.

Tickets for Tech Theatre Company productions are available at the Rozsa Box Office (487-3200), www.tickets.mtu.edu, and also at the door an hour before curtain time. Audience members are encouraged to come early; performances start promptly at 7:30.

General $10, Children age 18 and under $5. BUY TICKETS ONLINE Free to MTU students with ID.

Friday
October 24
Saturday
October 25
McArdle Theatre
7:30 pm

Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra
with the Bergonzi String Quartet

The Bergonzi Quartet and the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra will present what Milton Olsson calls "one of the truly unusual programs in the annals of modern orchestras." The Bergonzis will perform the "Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra" by Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859) as well as the "Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra" by Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), a piece which is based on a concerto grosso by George Frideric Handel. The Bergonzis are well-known to this community through their twelve-year residency with the Pine Mountain Music Festival. Members are Glenn Basham, violin, Scott Flavin, violin, Pamela McConnell, viola, and Ross Harbaugh, cello. All are faculty members at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida.

The concert will open with Richard Wagner's "Prelude to Die Meistersinger," which displays the skills and power of the KSO's wind musicians and this year's outstanding string section.

General $15, Children age 18 and under $7. BUY TICKETS ONLINE Free to MTU students with ID.

Friday
October 10
Rozsa Center
7:30 pm

Turn on the Heat

Houghton Turn On the Heat is a benefit concert to raise additional money for heat assistance for Copper Country residents in need. Committed performers are Keweenaw Brewgrass, Uncle Pete's All Star Barbeque Blues Band with special guest, and the MTU Jazz Lab Band.

General $10. BUY TICKETS ONLINE

Friday
October 3
Saturday
October 4
McArdle Theatre
7:30 pm