On the Town: Philharmonic news music to the ears By: Lillie-Beth Brinkman The Journal Record May 6, 2021
Lillie-Beth Brinkman
Talented musicians of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic will keep up their excellent work with a concert this weekend. They’ve also got a concert planned May 23 at the Oklahoma City Zoo.
In fact, the OKCPHIL recently announced shows for the new season, opening this fall.
So keep music in mind as you enjoy all the different ways this fantastic team, led by Music Director Alexander Mickelthwate, is enriching Oklahoma City’s cultural scene for all ages.
At 8 p.m. Saturday Mickelthwate will conduct “American Stories – ‘Tis a Gift,” featuring Valerie Watts on flute and Gaye LeBlanc-Germain on harp as they play works by composers Samuel Barber (“Adagio for Strings”); Jack Kilpatrick (“Concerto for Flute”); Hannah Lash (“Concerto for Harp”) and Aaron Copland (“Appalachian Spring”).
Oklahoman
Although he hasn t lived in Oklahoma long, Alexander Mickelthwate has become a super fan of one the state s composers.
For the second time in as many seasons, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic music director will conduct the orchestra Saturday in performing a work by the late Jack Frederick Kilpatrick (1915-1967), a prolific Stilwell native who infused the majority of his works with Cherokee folklore and traditions and whose entire body of work was lost for decades and then rediscovered by sheer happenstance. It s, first of all, that bizarre Oklahoma story that is not only an Oklahoma story, but a very American story of cultures organically growing together. It s absolutely the story of the melting pot, of his parents white parents from Texas moving to Cherokee country in the early 20th century, Mickelthwate said. He really grew up talking Cherokee, the Cherokee language, married a Cherokee wife, they lived the Cherokee lifestyle. He studied classical music, and
The OU School of Music will hold a virtual concert featuring the Womenâs Chorus and the Menâs Glee Club April 17.Â
The concert, conducted by Associate Director of Choral Activities David Howard, will feature two pieces â âChichester Psalmsâ by Leonard Bernstein and âRejoice in the Lamb, Op. 30â by Benjamin Britten.Â
Howard said students are enjoying preparing each piece.Â
â[The pieces] are fun, and they re beautiful,â Howard said. âOne of the pieces is by Leonard Bernstein, who wrote Westside Story, so there s a lot of West Side Story flavor in that music. The other piece sets a poem by an 18th century poet who was brilliant, but also a little bit manic. The composers captured it very well, and it s very youthful and rhythmic.â
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The University of Oklahoma School of Music will present a spring concert with the OU Womenâs Chorus and Menâs Glee Club at 7:30 p.m. April 17. The event will be available for public viewing free of charge via live stream at the time of the event.
The OU concert includes music for chorus, pipe organ, harp and percussion and will feature two 20th-century works, Chichester Psalms by American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (sung in Hebrew) and Rejoice in the Lamb, Op. 30 by Benjamin Britten.
Featured faculty soloists are Adam Pajan, organist, Gaye Leblanc-Germain, harpist, and Benjamin Holmes, percussionist. Guest soloist is Ian Thomas Howard, 11. He will sing the solo in Psalm 23 in the second movement of the Chichester Psalms.