WINSTON-SALEM -- Kenneth Frazelle's "The Motion of Stone" – for vocal soloists, chorus, and chamber orchestra – will receive its North Carolina premiere at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) on Saturday.

 

James Allbritten will conduct the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra and Cantata Singers. Works by Mozart and Beethoven will also be performed.

 

The concert will be presented at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 9, in Crawford Hall on the UNCSA campus, 1533 South Main St., Winston-Salem. Admission is free. For more information, call the UNCSA Box Office at 336-721-1945.

 

Frazelle's composition is based on the large-scale poem "Tombstones" by A.R. Ammons, one of America's most noted poets. Ammons was born in North Carolina and had a longstanding relationship with Wake Forest University. The poet died in 2001.

 

"The Motion of Stone" is in seven movements, and is a meditation on memorials and the impermanent universe. The work begins with the sound and image of chisels chipping into stone, finding names "the wind can't blow away."

 

One of Frazelle's most ambitious works, it received its world premiere at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1998. The piece was also commissioned by the Gardner, in fulfillment of the composer's month-long residency living at the Museum. Frazelle also worked on the project at the American Academy in Rome. A review in the Boston Globe stated "the final movement swelled to a great dance of enlightenment and bliss, causing the audience to rise in a standing ovation." The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters presented the composer with an award in 2000 and spoke of the composition as "sweeping and powerful, invoking the grandeur of the past."

A UNCSA School of Music alumnus, Frazelle is also on the UNCSA music faculty.

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is the first state-supported, residential school of its kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of Arts and Innovation”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from high school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. UNCSA is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual and moving image arts. UNCSA is located at 1533 S. Main St., Winston-Salem. For more information, visit www.uncsa.edu.

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