Bernstein Festival to feature Wind Ensemble and Opera at Kauffman Center

LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas Wind Ensemble, with director of bands, Paul W. Popiel, and the University of Kansas Opera will perform a concert at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 11 in Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, MO.

The performance celebrates works by Leonard Bernstein, including Profanation from Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah, which is one of his earliest pieces and demonstrates profound rhythmic influence from his mentor and friend Aaron Copland. From the middle of Bernstein’s life, the years of his great fame as a Broadway composer and music director of the New York Philharmonic, come the Overture to Candide and Fanfare for the Inauguration of John F. Kennedy. Arias and Barcarolles (1988), was among Bernstein’s final compositions, a charming song cycle, many with texts by the composer, that concern various aspects of love. Ingolf Dahl’s witty and effective Sinfonietta for Concert Band, by a composer who, like Bernstein, was strongly influenced by Igor Stravinsky, fills out the program with its idiomatic writing for winds.

KU School of Music Distinguished Professor Joyce Castle sang the premiere of Arias and Barcarolles with the composer at the piano in 1988.

Admission is free but tickets are required. Please call 816-994-7222 or visit kauffmancenter.org to reserve a ticket. Funding for the concert is provided by Reach Out Kansas, Inc., The Law Offices of Smithyman & Zakoura, and The Zakoura Family Fund, a Fund of the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation.

For more information, contact the KU School of Music at 785-864-3436 or visit music.ku.edu.