Three concerts over the next two weekends are sure to please a variety of music lovers while spotlighting the talents of Kalamazoo College students. All three are free and open to the public.
The first concert, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 5, in Dalton Theatre, will conclude the season for the Academy Street Winds, directed by Professor of Music Tom Evans. Their presentation, titled Viva España, will feature some of the driving rhythms, lush harmonies and toe-tapping melodies associated with the vibrant Spanish culture. A rousing paso dobles, an exhilarating dance suite titled Dazas Cubanas, the wind band classic El Camino Real by Alfred Reed, and The Impossible Dream, sung by the Academy Street Chorus, will be among the featured songs.
There was standing room only at the band’s last concert, so arrive early to ensure a seat. As your reward, attendees can enjoy several selections by the Academy Street Winds Flute Quartet during the concert’s prelude.
At 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 12, in Dalton Theatre, hear the Kalamazoo College Jazz Band, which Evans says is among the best he’s led in his 28 years at K.
The performance will feature classics such as Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil, Charles Mingus’ Boogie Stop Shuffle, Duke Pearson’s Jeannine, Oliver Nelson’s Checkpoint Charlie, David Benoit’s Café Rio, and George Gershwin’s Summertime, which will be sung by Isabella Pellegrom ’25 in a new, hip arrangement. Plus, per tradition, the band will have a dance number at the end, allowing attendees to dance themselves.
Finally, the Kalamazoo Philharmonia, directed by Department of Music Chair Andrew Koehler, will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 13, in Dalton Theatre.
In the Orthodox Christian tradition, keeping eternal memory is the promise given by the living to the recently deceased. In honor of the thousands who have died in Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, and of the resilient Ukrainian culture that Russia has tried to appropriate and erase over centuries, the concert will be both a celebration and an act of mourning.
A centuries-wide sampling of Ukrainian music will be featured including the bright, recently discovered Symphony of Maksym Berezovsky, which connects Ukraine to the wider trends of classical music in Europe; the charming, early Romantic symphony-overtures of Mykhailo Verbytsky, the author of the Ukrainian national anthem; the brooding late-Romantic lyrical lament of Viktor Kosenko; the angular, muscular music of Soviet composer Boris Lyatoshynsky, written for a movie about the patron saint of Ukrainian letters, Taras Shevchenko; the folk-inflected dance suites of Levko Kolodub; the hypnotic, sacred stillness of composer Hanna Havrylets; and Mykola Skoryk’s timeless Melody, an unofficial second national anthem of Ukraine.
For more information on these concerts, please call the Department of Music at 269.337.7070.