MOUNT VERNON — A program by the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet on Monday, Nov. 11, at Cornell College will include a piece by Cornell associate professor of music Don Chamberlain.
The concert is at 8 p.m. in King Chapel. General admission is $8 at the door. This is the second concert in Cornell’s Music Mondays series.
Founded in 1986, the quartet has become one of North America’s leading and most versatile guitar ensembles, performing Spanish, baroque and classical music, as well as a wide variety of contemporary music with such diverse influences as jazz, folk, world music and avant-garde. While the repertoire features pieces arranged by its members, the quartet is famous for its pioneering efforts to commission and premiere works. The Cornell concert will include “Dancing at the Century’s End” by Chamberlain, which was commissioned for the Mid-American Guitar Ensemble Festival in 1996.
“This is an appropriate piece for them,” Chamberlain says. “The first movement rocks out, with Pete Townshend-type power chords. The second movement is slow, dreamy and melodic. The third movement is fast, with humorous elements.”
Quartet member Joseph Hagedorn is a 1984 graduate of Cornell and a member of the music faculty at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.
The quartet’s appearances have taken them around the country and put them on the air for nationally syndicated radio programs “Saint Paul Sunday Morning” and “Performance Today.” Their two CDs, “New Works for Guitar Quartet” and “Over Land and Sea,” have received unanimous critical acclaim in the United States and Europe. Minneapolis Guitar Quartet performed during the inaugural Music Mondays season in 1998.
Upcoming Music Mondays concerts are Ethos Percussion Ensemble on Jan. 27, 2003, and the Deanna Bogart Band on March 3.