Internationally renowned composer and UNLV distinguished professor, Virko Baley, will premiere his newest work, "Treny," at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 25 in the Beam Music Center's Doc Rando Recital Hall on the UNLV campus. This event is free and open to the public.
The concert will feature UNLV artist-in-residence Natalia Khoma, violoncello I; UNLV assistant professor Andrew Smith, violoncello II; UNLV assistant professor of voice Christine Seitz, soprano; and special guest speaker, John Schaefer, executive producer of music programming at WNYC Radio in New York City.
Schaeffer, who hosts and produces the popular program "New Sounds" for National Public Radio, will host a talk preceding the performance of "Treny" titled "Music In Between: An American Composer's Slavic Soul." He also will host a talk, "Modern Music in a Postmodern World," at 2:30 p.m. Feb. 26 in the Doc Rando Recital Hall.
"Treny ("Laments") is part of a trilogy of works by Ukrainian-American composer Virko Baley that deal with the ultimate questions: questions of mortality, death, grief, and the legacy we leave behind," writes Schaeffer. "It was inspired by the grief-wracked Renaissance poetry of Jan Kochanowski. Writing at a time of personal loss, and working with purposely restrained forces, Baley offers some of his most deeply felt, ingeniously developed music. Haunted by ghosts, suspended in a musical and emotional twilight, 'Treny' is a masterful example of music's power to express what words cannot."
Ken Smith, international critic for Strad Magazine, the world's leading English-language string journal, will be in attendance the evening of the concert. Smith's recent review of "Treny," which appeared in the March '03 Gramophone said, "The strength of the piece lies in its highly - and unapologetically - emotional content, dispensed artfully with the most thematic discretion."
Baley was born in Ukraine in 1938, but has spent his creative life in the U.S. and considers himself a citizen of the world. Multi-lingual and multi-disciplinary, he infuses his music with themes of contemporary and traditional motifs.
