WSU women to present recital ‘softly sung’

As part of the Faculty Artist Series, the Sotto Voce Trio will present a recital Jan. 25 that includes a work inspired by the university’s "Personnages Oiseaux" by Spanish sculptor Joan Miró.

The Sotto Voce Trio members Dorothy Crum, soprano; Jean Lansing, saxophone; and Sylvia Coats, piano, are faculty members in WSU’s School of Music.

Joining the trio for Meyer Kupferman’s "Miró Miró on the Wall" are Mark Foley, WSU assistant professor of bass, and alumnus Kevin Bobo, percussion instructor at Northwest Missouri State University. The work was commissioned in 1995 by WSU for its centennial and is inspired by a Miró mosaic on the exterior of WSU’s Ulrich Museum.

The trio specializes in avant-garde works written by American composers since 1980. Sotto Voce, which means "softly sung," reflects their performance philosophy "to present new music to the world softly, in an unpretentious way."

Other works on the program are "Rippling Sounds," a set of haiku pieces for voice and piano by Robert Fairfax Birch and Divertimento for alto saxophone and marimba by Akira Yuyama. Haiku is Japanese poetry comprising three lines and 17 syllables with nature as the subject.