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Male vocal ensemble Cantus, David Hagedorn to premier Hamlin-Mbele collaboration at St. Olaf

mjc
March 1, 2001

NORTHFIELD, Minn. ? The male vocal chamber ensemble Cantus will perform in concert Thursday, March 15, at St. Olaf College with percussionist David Hagedorn. The concert will include the premiere of a newly commissioned work with an African connection, "Songs From Matengo Folktales" ? a collaboration between St. Olaf music faculty member Peter Hamlin and English faculty member Joseph Mbele.

The concert, at 7:30 p.m. in Boe Memorial Chapel, is free and open to the public. In addition to the Hamlin-Mbele piece, Cantus will perform works by Barber, Bernstein and Tormis.

Mbele is author of Matengo Folktales, a new book about the Matengo tradition in Tanzania. The book includes a number of folk songs that were transcribed by Mbele. Hamlin used the transcriptions to create a piece for male chorus, marimba and percussion.

"Joseph?s book is about things he remembers growing up in the Matengo culture ? including many stories told to him by his father," Hamlin said. "When I read the book, I especially enjoyed the songs, and I decided to use them in a musical composition."

Hamlin asked his friend Mbele to sing the songs for him. Hamlin taped the songs, memorized the Matengo words by singing them to himself, and during the next several weeks arranged the songs into a single musical piece.

"There?s no single storyline; but you hear about characters and events from several of the tales," Hamlin says of "Songs From Matengo Folktales."

In one song an animal plays a xylophone made of bones. In another, a character tells a story on a set of drums. "The words are very colorful; many are onomatopoetic, in the way of the Matengo storytellers. I think the audience will love the sounds of the words, even though most won?t understand them."

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Hamlin is particularly pleased that Cantus will perform the new composition, because several Cantus members are former students of his. After the March 15 St. Olaf performance, Cantus plans to record "Songs From Matengo Folktales" for a new compact disc.

Cantus (pronounced CAN-tus) is a full-time, non-profit ensemble dedicated to performing innovative and engaging music. The 12-member ensemble seeks to sing the finest music of the past as well as new music.

The six-year-old Cantus ? comprised of St. Olaf College graduates ? is rooted in a love of a cappella singing and camaraderie among its members, who continue to sing as they did while in college. Audiences across the country have been captivated by the joy, trust and understanding exhibited by Cantus.

In 1998 the ensemble performed its first tour ?six weeks on the East Coast, with stops in many major cities. Since then the group has performed at the Pennsylvania ACDA convention, the Newport Music Festival, the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts in State College, the National ACDA Convention in Chicago, the Central Division ACDA Convention in Ohio, and numerous other performances across the nation.

The ensemble has recorded three compact discs, all distributed by St. Olaf Records: "Cantus: introit," "Cantus: vagabond" and "Cantus: tidings," a Christmas album.

Members of the ensemble are Brian Arreola, Michael Hanawalt, Curt Hopmann, Albert Jordan, Lawrence Wiliford and Peter Zvanovec, tenors; Kelvin Chan and Erick Lichte, bass-baritones; Alan Dunbar and Timothy Takach, basses; and Adam Reinwald and Paul Wilson, baritones.

More information about the ensemble is available at the Cantus website (www.cantusmensinging.org).

Hamlin has written for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, solo voice and electronic instruments. Last year he received the prestigious ASCAP PLU$ Award for musical compositions from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. He has been involved in Continental Harmony, a 50-state project sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Composers Forum, and as part of the project composed a piece for the Middlebury (Vermont) College and Community Choirs and the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble.

He has won numerous other composition awards, including the McCurdy Prize, the Kenneth Davenport Award for Orchestral Music and the Louis Lane Prize. He has published a number of works through MMB Music Inc. His works for young audiences have received national recognition from the Parents Choice Awards and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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He earned a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied composition with Joseph Schwantner and Samuel Adler. He has taught music composition, theory and electronic music at St. Olaf since 1992.

Mbele specializes in the connection between folklore and literature, teaching post-colonial and third-world literature as well as a popular St. Olaf course called "The Hero and the Trickster." He also has taught Swahili literature, theory of literature, African literature, sociology of literature, the epic and African-American literature.

He has done folklore research in Kenya, Tanzania and the United States, and given lectures and conference papers on folklore in Canada, Finland, India, Israel, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and the United States. He enjoys many types of music, including western classical, traditional folk, reggae, rap and "any great dance music."

He earned a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin. Before coming to St. Olaf in 1990 he taught at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

St. Olaf music faculty member David Hagedorn has recorded with the George Russell Living Time Orchestra, jazz singer Debbie Duncan and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. He regularly performs with the jazz groups Pure Joy and Low Blows, and in the percussion duo SCHAG.

In addition to jazz, Hagedorn performs classical music with such groups as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Contemporary Ensemble.

St. Olaf College prepares students to become responsible citizens of the world, fostering development of mind, body and spirit. A four-year, coeducational liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), St. Olaf has a student enrollment of 2,950 and a full-time faculty complement of approximately 300. It is one of Money Guide?s top 100 "elite values in college education today," and it leads the nation?s colleges in percentage of students who study abroad.

Contact Michael Cooper at 507-786-3315 or cooperm@stolaf.edu.