Good things do come in small packages! The reduced forces of the TTU Chamber Orchestra will be on display for a program of three works that will provide national flavors from Mexico, Venezuela, the United States, and Italy (by way of a French composer!)
The action begins with seminal American composer Aaron Copland’s Three Latin-American Sketches, which was composed for the 1959 Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. The sketches in order contain the vigor of the Venezuelan and Mexican musical crossroads (Estribillo), the Mexican countryside (Paisaje Mexicano), and a dance style from the Mexican state of Jalisco (Danze de Jalisco).
Next, four student vocal soloists will collaborate with the chamber players as Assistant Professor of Voice Dr. Gregory Brookes will serve as the stage director for Samuel Barber’s one-act opera titled A Hand of Bridge. With a cast that consists of only two unhappily married couples playing a game of bridge and “thinking aloud” their innermost desires as they play the game, this novel entry to the American operatic canon is quite possibly the shortest consistently performed opera from any world tradition (at around nine minutes in length).
Finally, the explosive and nearly cartoonish character of Jacques Ibert’s Divertissement draws from the incidental music that Ibert composed for an 1851 comedic play called The Italian Straw Hat. In the play, seemingly everything goes wrong for an already-nervous groom on his wedding day when the horse that will take him to his wedding eats the titular straw hat—and madness ensues when he tries to replace it.
