What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
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Loungsangroong and Henriksen. In March Loungsangroong and Trillium Salon Series brought together more than 30 musicians in the contemporary gallery at Crystal Bridges to perform the minimalist composition "In C" during Northwest Arkansas Community College's Spring Arts and Culture Festival. Loungsangroong, at the time, said that the performance highlighted the festival's theme of "Interdependence," which focused on how individual actions affected the world at large. For "In C" musicians were given the same score but could change to different pattern and repeat lines whenever they wanted to, which affected the overall sound of the piece. "People were wandering through and listening to different parts of the piece in different areas. And it all sounded different, because there might be like a harpist and a percussionist and a saxophone player over here, but then over there, it's a clarinet player and a violinist," Henriksen says. In the same spirit, www.malco.com www.malco.com www.malco.com www.malco.com www.malco.com https://fpatheatre.com C.S. LEWIS GREAT DIVORCE "INFINITELY THOUGHT-PROVOKING... CONSISTENTLY INTRIGUING!" THE NEW YORK TIMES GreatDivorceOnStage.com WALTON ARTS CENTER JUNE 5 • 3PM Max McLean - Artistic Director PRESENTS 38 WHAT'S UP! MAY 22-28, 2022 C4 Continued From Page 7 BENTONVILLE I got into it in the first place was not from a place of confidence, but really more so from a place of fear: 'Can I really make it as a composer?'" Support, he says, was lacking. He kept composing music when possible and is now a full time composer. "… It means a great deal to me where you're in an environment where you're not necessarily surrounded by people who do the things that you do, are passionate about the things that you're passionate about," he explains. "I could go to a music festival and be surrounded by people there, and it'd be in an environment that supports the arts and supports composition from that standpoint, but then I'm the only one who is African- American in that situation. So it's almost kind of the type of thing where no matter where I go, or what I'm trying to do, I don't really fit. "I was sharing with someone last night, another young person that's looking to go into the music field, graduating from high school, looking to take on the world, and he's Black," May says. "I told him, 'Take everything that you hear with a grain of salt, and don't be deterred. Don't be distracted or discouraged by anything that you hear whether it be too positive, or whether it be too negative, because you need some realistic perspective. But at the same time, trust yourself, your gut instinct, trust what it is that you're doing, and know that there are people out there who support you.'" Learn more about May at williammaymusic.com. — MONICA HOOPER MHOOPER@NWADG.COM May Continued From Page 7 Loungsangroong wanted to highlight Black southern composers to go along with the themes of "The Dirty South," which explores the relationship between music and visual art in Black southern expression from 1920-2020. The music performed by the all-women clarinet quartet will be by Black composers from the South, three with Arkansas connections: Scott Joplin, William Grant Still and Florence Price, whose music has seen a recent resurgence. "She was in her time neglected. She was the first African-American woman to have her symphony performed by a major symphony organization in the '30s, but then she kind of got put in the dust bin," Henriksen explains, saying that interest in Price has exploded over the last five years with major symphonies presenting and recording her works and numerous articles coming out about the Little Rock- born composer. "She didn't have much of her music published when she was still alive. It was found in a summer home and rediscovered way after her death. The archives are actually at the [University of Arkansas] Mullins Library in Special Collections now," Henriksen says. "A whole bunch of people have started recording these pieces that were unpublished when she was alive, including Er-Gene Kahng, who's a violinist and violin professor at the university. She is on the board of Trillium, and she was the first person to ever record Florence Price's second violin concerto." Members of the C4 Clarinet Quartet have played her pieces for other performances and with other groups. "We are doing two pieces by her. One is an arrangement of an organ piece called 'Adoration,' and the other one is from her piano piece, 'Silk Cat and Walking Cane,'" Loungsangroong says. Along with selections of Joplin's rags and Still's quartet, the performance will also feature works by a contemporary composer, William A.R. May, from Atlanta. "We want to obviously promote works by these composers because they haven't been celebrated as much as they should," Loungsangroong says. Except for "Two Movements," by May, the material also offers a unique musical challenge to the quartet as the pieces were not composed for four clarinets. "I come to the performers with the idea that the more interactive that we can get, the better, because we really want it to be something that really connects us through music," Henriksen explains. "It's great because we're experiencing this amazing live music, and then we can stare at amazing pieces of artwork at the same time."