Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Composer George Walker to be on hand for Sinfonia world premiere

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Composer George Walker will join Sinfonia da Camera on Saturday (Oct. 6) for the world premiere of his “Movements” for cello and orchestra, featuring Dimitry Kouzov, professor of cello at the University of Illinois. Tenor Albert Rudolph Lee will join Sinfonia to perform Walker’s “Lilacs” for voice and orchestra, a piece commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for which Walker was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for composition.

George Walker

George Walker

When Walker graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1945, he became the first African-American to receive a diploma from the institute. His debut recital in Town Hall in New York City marked the first time a black instrumentalist performed there.

Walker has held faculty appointments at more than a half dozen colleges and conservatories, including Smith College, Peabody Institute and Rutgers University. He has composed more than 90 published works, which have been performed by major orchestras all over the world. His awards include two Guggenheim fellowships, two Rockefeller fellowships, an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, and grants from the National Endowment of the Arts.

He has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Eastman School of Music, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Pew Charitable Trust and the Boys Choir of Harlem, among others.

Ian Hobson, the music director of Sinfonia, has made several recordings of Walker’s work and plans to record Saturday night’s concert as well. “He has revised these scores and is putting out what he hopes are definitive recordings of his music,” Hobson said.

Walker, who is 90, is “amazingly alert and involved in revising his compositions and supervising the performance and recording of them,” Hobson said.

Hobson has programmed Mendelssohn’s Overture to Ruy Blas, Op. 95, and Symphony No. 4, Op. 90 (the “Italian”), to begin and end the program, deliberately positioning compositions by a famous child prodigy adjacent to a new work composed by a nonagenarian. “The mood and the atmosphere and the orchestrations are totally different – both interesting in their own ways,” he said. “I think for the audience, it will make a wonderful sandwich. I was going for maximum contrast.”

The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Foellinger Great Hall at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, in Urbana. To purchase tickets, visit www.krannertcenter.com, or call 217-333-6280.

[ Email | Share ]

Read Next

Life sciences Photo of Michael Ward standing in tall grass on a riverbank.

How are migrating wild birds affected by H5N1 infection in the U.S.?

Each spring, roughly 3.5 billion wild birds migrate from their warm winter havens to their breeding grounds across North America, eating insects, distributing plant seeds and providing a variety of other ecosystem services to stopping sites along the way. Some also carry diseases like avian influenza, a worry for agricultural, environmental and public health authorities. […]

Announcements Marcelo Garcia, professor of civil and environmental engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering.

Illinois faculty member elected to National Academy of Engineering

Champaign, Ill. — Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Social sciences Male and female student embracing on the quad with flowering redbud tree and the ACES library in the background. Photo by Michelle Hassel

Dating is not broken, but the trajectories of relationships have changed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to some popular culture writers and online posts by discouraged singles lamenting their inability to find romantic partners, dating is “broken,” fractured by the social isolation created by technology, pandemic lockdowns and potential partners’ unrealistic expectations. Yet two studies of college students conducted a decade apart found that their ideas about […]

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010