Voices of Change contemporary music ensemble to hold concert in memory of SMU Music Professor Ross Powell

The contemporary classical music ensemble Voices of Change opens its 2013-14 season with Poetic Overtones, a concert dedicated to the memory of Ross Powell, co-founder of the ensemble and longtime SMU music faculty member, who passed away earlier this year.

The concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 20 in Caruth Auditorium. Admission is free to SMU faculty, staff and students with an SMU I.D.

The program will include Four Pieces for Piano, op. 4 by Sergei Prokofiev; the String Trio in C Major by Jean Françaix; Trio by Pierre Jalbert, co-commissioned by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Wigmore Hall; and Night Dances by Juliana Hall, set to poetry by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and others. It will also feature Bailes encima del escritorio de nuestra juventúd by Charles Zoll, the winning composition in the national Rapido! Take Three!! Composition Contest of 2013.

Soprano and Meadows alumna Dee Donasco and alumna and piano faculty member Liudmila Georgievskaya will join Voices of Change for the performance. Voices of Change members include Helen Blackburn, flute; Paul Garner, adjunct SMU music faculty, clarinet; Maria Schleuning, violin; Barbara Sudweeks, adjunct SMU music faculty, viola; Kari Nostbakken, cello; Deborah Mashburn, percussion; and SMU Meadows Professor of Voice Virginia Dupuy, mezzo-soprano. Jo Boatright, who founded Voices of Change with Powell and now serves as artistic director emerita, will also perform in tribute to her former colleague.

A pre-concert forum by Dr.  Laurie Shulman will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the choral hall of the Owen Arts Center, room 1180. Following the concert, a reception hosted by the Meadows Division of Music will be held in the Hope lobby outside Caruth Auditorium.

Ross Powell was co-founder of Voices of Change and served as president and director from 1975-1983. He was also a member of the First New Music Panel at the National Endowment for the Arts and served as a panelist and evaluator for the Texas Commission on the Arts, as well as with the Office of Cultural Affairs with the City of Dallas. As an orchestral performer, he worked with the Toledo Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Rochester Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Dallas Opera Orchestra. He also served as director of educational services with the Dallas Symphony, developing and administering grants that provided performances for youth. Powell joined the Division of Music at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts in 1966 as an associate professor of clarinet and served as head of the Orchestral Instruments Department from 1979 to 1995. He retired from SMU in 2005. 

For more information, visit voicesofchange.com.