Music of Hindemith, Schumann, Weitz, Goldmark, and Locklair
Woolsey Hall
500 College Street, New Haven
Free and open to the public, no tickets required.
The 2010 – 2011 season of Great Organ Music at Yale will continue on Sunday, October 10 with a recital by Thomas Murray, University Organist and professor at Yale University. Works of Hindemith, Schumann, Weitz, Goldmark, and Locklair are on the program, which will begin at 8 pm in Woolsey Hall (corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven).
As a tribute to Paul Hindemith’s years on the Yale faculty, the composer’s Sonata II will open the program, which continues with Robert Schumann’s Four Sketches, opus 60, charming cameos offered in observance of the bicentennial of Schumann’s birth. The First Organ Symphony of neglected Belgian composer Guy Weitz, based on Gregorian chant themes, will be a welcome discovery for those not acquainted with this late Romantic composer. As is his custom, Prof. Murray will include an orchestral transcription on the program, “Im Garten” from the Rustic Wedding Symphony by Carl Goldmark. Played in an arrangement by the legendary Edwin H. Lemare, this piece will display the sumptuous colors of the Newberry Memorial Organ as few pieces can do. The concluding work will be Glory and Peace, a seven-movement work by American composer Dan Locklair commissioned by the Anglican Association of Musicians and premiered by Prof. Murray in 2008 at the Disney Hall in Los Angeles.
Professor Murray has been a member of the Yale faculty since 1981 and was appointed University Organist in 1990. His performing career has taken him to all parts of Europe and to Japan, Australia, and Argentina. He has appeared as a soloist with the Pittsburgh, Houston, Milwaukee, and New Haven symphony orchestras, the National Chamber Orchestra in Washington, D.C., and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra during its tour of Finland in 1996. The American Guild of Organists named him International Performer of the Year in 1986; as a recipient of this distinction he joined such luminaries as Marie-Claire Alain, Jean Guillou, and Dame Gillian Weir. The Royal College of Organists in England awarded him an FRCO diploma honoris causa in 2003 and in 2007 the Yale School of Music awarded him the Gustave Stoeckel Award for excellence in teaching. During his years at Yale he has at times been active as a choral conductor, and prior to joining the faculty he was organist and choirmaster at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul (Episcopal) in Boston. Professor Murray is Principal Organist and Artist-in-Residence at Christ Church Episcopal in New Haven, where he mentors a current ISM organ major as Organ Scholar.
The recital, presented by Yale Institute of Sacred Music, is free and open to the public; no tickets are required.