March 29, 1999 Volume 21, No. 13

Commencement Eve Concert Gets Millennial Fever Ithaca College’s 32nd annual Commencement Eve Concert, "All Our Yesterdays: A Musical Sweep of the Past Millennium," will be held on Friday, May 14, at 8:30 p.m. in Ben Light Gymnasium. Free and open to the public, the concert will be directed for the 12th consecutive year by Dana Wilson, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Music in the School of Music. The concert program will feature performances by the Ithaca College Trombone Choir, Wind Ensemble, West African Djembé Ensemble, Choir, Marimba Ragtime Band, and Jazz Workshop, as well as student and faculty soloists. The selections will range from Palestrina’s "Ecce Veniet Dies Illa" and classical pieces by Bach and Haydn to West African drumming, Duke Ellington’s "In a Mellow Tone," and the theme from Star Wars. Freshman oboe player Colin Bauer will be among the members of the Ithaca College Wind Ensemble performing in the Commencement Eve Concert. The group will play the theme from Star Wars as well as Shostakovich’s "Festive Overture," which was also on the program for the April 12 School of Music concert at Alice Tully Hall in New York City. "Since this will be the final Commencement Eve Concert of the millennium, it seemed appropriate to look back at the music of the past 1,000 years and see where we’ve been," says Wilson. "The program will roughly be in chronological order, beginning with chant and working its way forward to the music of today. The selected pieces represent the two streams of musical influence in American culture — European and African — which have synthesized to become what we now know as popular music, with gospel, jazz, blues, and rock." The program will employ Wilson’s "surround sound" concept, which promises a good seat anywhere in the audience. Ensembles are positioned around the gymnasium; when one group finishes, another begins, creating a continuous performance that originates from various directions.