Color of Sound displays musical diversity

The A&M-Commerce department of music presented the second performance of the Color of Sound concert series on Monday, March 7, at 3:30 p.m. in Finney Concert Hall at the Music Building.

The majority of the music played involved strings, with the harp present in a few scores and an accompaniment of clarinet and flute in the final score. Concertmaster for the East Texas Symphony and Northeast Texas Symphony Mark Miller played violin in the concert, and said the purpose behind the Color of Sound series is to present a diverse selection of music.

"The reason we started calling it the Color of Sound was we realized we were trying to get in just about every instrumental ‘color' that we could," he said "So, every concert is different, every concert features different combinations of instruments. Sometimes we've had voice, and we've had brass. The next one is going to feature the French horn."

Miller was joined on stage by his wife, Ute Miller, on viola. Beth Elsner on violin and Karen Maddox Smith on cello completed the string quartet. These four opened the concert with a piece by Mozart.

"We have the luxury of being able to practice together probably more than people who don't live together," Mark said about playing alongside his wife. "We've played together for a long time now, more than twenty years. We know each others' playing inside and out."

Harpist Alison Read then partnered with Mark in playing Camille Saint-Saens's "Fantaisie." The string quartet then returned to play a piece by Samuel Barber before they were joined by Read, adjunct professor Jocelyn Goranson on flute and associate professor Mary Druhan on clarinet for the final song.

With the third concert in the series coming later this semester, Smith said it was important for music students at A&M-Commerce to attend.

"It's absolutely crucial, speaking from experience and remembering being a student," she said. "Recordings are great. But live music, there's just no substitute for it."

Mark also said it was "vitally important" for music students to hear professionals and their instructors play live and this is made even more enjoyable inside the Music Building.

"Certainly when you have a terrific venue like this where people want to come in and perform, it's the opportunity not to be missed," he said.