Resident Composer Hilliard's Music Performed at Kennedy Center
News
James Madison University faculty and guest musicians will perform compositions by resident composer and music Professor John Hilliard Wednesday, Jan. 31, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The 7:30 p.m. concert in the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater features three divergent works by Hilliard: Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano, "Mozart Mosaics" and Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Chamber Orchestra.
JMU faculty musicians Janice Minor, Wanchi Huang, Carl Donakowski and Lori Piitz will perform on the respective instruments in the quartet, which was commissioned by the Virginia Music Teachers Association through its annual competition in 1993. First performed at JMU during the association's October 1993 conference, the composition's first and last movements were suggested by the soaring landscapes of the western United States.
"Mozart Mosaics," a two-part work commissioned by the Augsburg Mozartfest 2004, is the culmination of a unique composing challenge for Hilliard. Officials of the German music festival asked Hilliard to finish an incomplete 33-measure musical fragment for violoncello and cembalo left unfinished by Mozart in 1782. Hilliard completed the musical fragment in one of Mozart's favorite forms, the Sonata-Rondo structure and also composed his own quicker-tempo work, drawing from musical ideas derived from the Mozart/Hilliard composition.
Hilliard's completion of the fragment and its companion piece, "Mosaics on a Fragment of Mozart," will be performed by cellist James Wilson and pianist Carsten Schmidt, the men who nominated Hilliard to complete the Mozart fragment. Wilson is the organizer of the Richmond ChamberFest and Schmidt teaches at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and directs the Staunton Music Festival.
The Staunton festival commissioned Hilliard's "Concerto No. 2" in 2004. The Kennedy Center performance features the JMU Faculty Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Patrick Walders, director of choral activities at JMU. Schmidt is a soloist, and the Montpelier Winds — a JMU faculty quintet made up of flutist Beth Chandler, oboist Michele Kirkdorffer, clarinetist Minor, bassoonist Susan Barber and horn player Abigail Pack — are featured performers.
Hilliard has received commissions and grants from his alma mater, Cornell University, the Northwest Trumpet Guild, Young Keyboard Artists Association, Virginia Commonwealth University, Mid-America Arts Council, American Symphony Orchestra League, Meet-the-Composer Program and Virginia Commission for the Arts. In 1998-99, he was composer-in-residence in Hong Kong as a Senior Fulbright Scholar-Artist.
The Kennedy Center concert is part of a nine-event series begun in 2005 to showcase the talents of JMU faculty and student musicians. The JMU Wind Symphony will perform April 25.
