[148] Stones River Chamber Players Open New Season Oct. 26 At MTSU

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 16, 2009
CONTACT: Tim Musselman, School of Music, 615-898-2493

STONES RIVER CHAMBER PLAYERS OPEN NEW SEASON OCT. 26 AT MTSU
Free Concert Offers Composition Penned By Composer During Time In POW Camp

(MURFREESBORO)—The Stones River Chamber Players, an ensemble-in-residence at MTSU, will open its 2009-2010 season with Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 26 in the Hinton Music Hall of the Wright Music Building on the MTSU Campus.
Faculty performers for the free and open concert will include Andrea Dawson (violin), Todd Waldecker (clarinet), Xiao-Fan Zhang (cello) and Leopoldo Erice (piano). Michael Linton, music theory and composition professor, will serve as commentator for the concert.
Referring to Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, Linton said, "There are many great pieces written in the 20th century—Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Britten's Peter Grimes, Copland's Appalachian Spring—but certainly none are as miraculous as (this work)."
"Linton said that the quartet was written by Messiaen when he was in a POW camp and first performed by the composer and fellow inmates before an audience of prisoners and guards.
“It is a piece that carries with it none of the smoke of war but in every measure is lighted by the joy of transcendence," he observed.
SRCP comprises a dozen plus players who divide into multiple configurations to present an exciting variety of chamber music. Subsequent concerts for the SRCP season will include programs titled “The Latin Flair” on Feb. 1, 2010; and “Piano Forbidden!” on March 29, 2010.
For more information, please call the MTSU School of Music at 615-898-2493 or visit its official Web site at www.mtsumusic.com.



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With three Nobel Prize winners among its alumni and former faculty, Middle Tennessee State University confers master’s degrees in 10 areas, the Specialist in Education degree, the Doctor of Arts degree and the Doctor of Philosophy degree. MTSU is ranked among the top 100 public universities in the nation in the Forbes “America’s Best Colleges” 2009 survey.