MOUNT VERNON -- Cornell College soprano
Lisa Hearne will present a faculty recital Tuesday, March 2, featuring pieces solely by American composers, including text and poetry by writers as diverse as Mark Twain and Bob Dylan.
The recital is at 7:30 p.m. in Cornell's King Chapel. Admission is free.
The "All-American" performance includes the compositions of Gordon Myers, a 1941 Cornell graduate who went on to study at Julliard and Columbia. He became a noted singer, composer and educator known for his collections of humorous songs, including "They Said," a two-volume set of comical, pithy sayings by such quotables as W.C. Fields and Yogi Berra, which Hearne will perform.
Other sets include Samuel Barber's "Mélodies Passagères," set to poetry from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Poèmes français," and "Canti della Lontananza" with music and poetry by Gian Carlo Menotti.
Hearne will perform "Forever Young," an excerpt from John Corigliano's "Mr. Tambourine Man," a cycle of seven songs set to the poetry of Bob Dylan. Corigliano, who was unfamiliar with Dylan's original song settings, composed the set in 2000 for a commission. Reading Dylan's texts as poetry rather than lyrics, the Oscar-winning composer fit them to his own music.
Other featured composers include Ned Rorem, Richard Hundley, Lee Hoiby and Thomas Pasatieri, living composers whose careers span the last half of the 20th century and continue to influence American art music.
Hearne is the choral director and voice area head at Cornell, where she has taught since 1992. She will be accompanied by Chiayi Lee, a doctoral candidate in piano at the University of Iowa.
