Barbara Phillips-Farley and Barry Torres

A List
1/24/11

'Music For A While': Recital Offered By SLU Faculty

CANTON - A recital titled "Music For a While...," performed by Barbara Phillips-Farley, piano, and Barry Torres, countertenor, will be held on Sunday, February 6, at 2 p.m. in Peterson-Kermani Performance Hall at St. Lawrence University. The event is open to the public, free of charge.

The program opens with the two performing Henry Purcell's haunting song "Music for a while," as arranged by Benjamin Britten. Taken from the incidental music to the play Oedipus by John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee, the song accompanies a conjuring scene. They will also perform Biblical Songs, Op. 99 by Antonin Dvořák, 10 songs from the Book of Psalms, taken from the Czech Kralice Bible.

Solo, Torres will perform a set of monophonic (one-line) songs by the 14th-century French composer/poet Guillaume de Machaut, accompanying himself on gothic harp and dunbec. Phillips-Farley will perform works by J.S. Bach (Prelude and Fugue) and Mozart (Piano Sonata no. 12, K. 332).

Phillips-Farley came to St. Lawrence in 1990 from Iowa, where she taught at Coe College, performed with the University of Iowa Center for New Music and completed her doctorate in piano. She accompanies the University Chorus and Laurentian Singers, teaches piano and offers a number of courses in the music department.

Torres has been the University's director of music ensembles since 1998, directing the Laurentian Singers, University Chorus and the Early Music Singers, in addition to teaching voice. He also co-directs the Gospel Choir and Band. He is an accomplished countertenor as both soloist and ensemble singer and is the founding director of Schola Cantorum of Syracuse, a professional early music vocal ensemble, now in its 35th season.

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