He used these macabre terms recently to describe the University’s annual Percussion Ensemble Halloween Concert. For the last 25 years, this strange blend of music and mayhem has set the mood for the October holiday, and it’s proven to be wildly popular among Clarksville residents.

“It’s a very family-friendly concert, and it’s always a sell-out,” Steinquest said.

At 6 and 8 p.m. this Friday, APSU musicians will once again don costumes and perform a mix of Halloween music in an eerily decorated concert hall inside the Music/Mass Communication Building.

The 2008 Percussion Ensemble Halloween Concert

The evening begins with “This is Halloween,” from the Tim Burton-produced film “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” It’ll feature the APSU voice faculty, including Gail Robinson-Oturu, Sharon Mabry, Doug Rose, Tom King and Korre Foster.

“There is scary classical piano music by Bela Bartok and creepy orchestral music by Hector Berlioz arranged for the ensemble,” Steinquest said. “The voice faculty may be forced into playing a life-or-death game show during the Berlioz!”

If they survive, the show will continue with a strange, robotic piece, titled “Starship Groove,” and “two violently percussive ensembles,” Steinquest said, known as “The Doomsday Machine” and “Ku-Ka-Ilimoku.”

“But ‘Mist,’ a beautifully haunting all-keyboard piece, acts as a counterbalance,” he said.

This year’s performance marks the concert’s 25th anniversary, but Steinquest is still hesitant to give away too many details about the show. He likes to keep attendees guessing from year to year as to what elaborate costume he might be wearing.

“It’s a bigger secret than anything from Dan Brown’s latest novel,” he said. “You’ll just have to come to find out.”

He did, however, let slip that the two big drumming apes from last year, Chris Brooks and Chris Crockarell, might make an encore appearance. He also said the show will close with “Above,” a song by the Blue Man Group, featuring APSU music professor Stanley Yates on electric guitar.

Admission to the Halloween concert is two cans of food, which will be donated to Loaves and Fishes, or $3. For more information, or tickets, contact the music department office at 221-7818.

Images from the 2008 Halloween Concert

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The program will be devoted to music from Spain and South America and will feature music by Spanish baroque guitarist Santiago de Murcia, early 20th century Spanish composers Enrique Granados and Manuel de Falla, Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla and Brazilian composers Heitor Villa-Lobos and Baden Powell de Aquino. Yates will be assisted by APSU percussion professor David Steinquest on melodic, vibraphone and Latin percussion.

APSU Professor of Music Stanley Yates

The music of Baden Powell de Aquino is rarely played due to the fact that very little of it has been published. Yates will perform a number of pieces he has transcribed from the Brazilian guitarist’s recordings.

Yates recently returned from two trips to Romania, where he was filmed for a documentary aired on national television. He also gave two performances broadcast live from the National Radio Hall in Bucharest, and he recently received a Distinguished Artist Award from Bergen College New Jersey.

Wednesday’s concert is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Yates at 931-221-7351 or .

Patricia Halbeck playing the Noble and Sentimental Waltzes by Maurice Ravel

The first set featured Maurice Ravel’s Noble and Sentimental Waltzes, which were a look back at a France that could no longer exist after that city passed through the maelstrom of the first world war.

Patricia Halbeck takes her seat and The piano starts to play a series of almost harsh and somewhat discordant notes with an upbeat refrain hinting at that innocence that was lost never to be found again.

Stanley Yates playing the Twelve Études for Guitar by Heitor Villa-Lobos

She was followed by Stanley Yates who played a selection from Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, his Twelve Études for Guitar which was written in 1928. In his playing You could hear the intertwining of European and Latin sounds and rhythms.

“To some degree, his guitar works also pay homage to Chopin, whose piano etudes were clearly the model for Villa-Lobos’s Estudos for Guitar. These are true concert Études for the guitar and, like the Chopin works, are meant for the stage; they are not limited to the status of mere pedagogical tools. Villa-Lobos’s Estudos also represent an attempt, consciously or subconsciously, to legitimatize the guitar as a concert instrument and raise it to the level of the piano…”

- Choro: a social history by Tamara Elena Livingston-Isenhour and Thomas George Caracas Garcia

Emily Hanna Crane and Jeffery Wood play The Sonata for Violin and Piano by Maurice Ravel

A duet by Emily Hanna Crane on the Violin, and Jeffery Wood on the Piano followed. They returned to Maurice Revel’s works and performed his Sonata for Violin and Piano.

“The Sonata for Violin and Piano was a rather late composition in Ravel’s life. The work progressed slowly as a result of ill health and took four years (1923-1927) to complete.”

Emily Crane has a magnificent ability to pluck emotion with the same ease as she could pluck her strings. Jeffery Wood’s ability on the piano meshed nicely resulting in a seamless flow to the melody.

Lisa Vanarsdel playing Flute Players op. 27 by Albert Roussel, with Jeffery Wood accompanying her on the Piano

For the next set Jeffery Wood remained on the piano, where he was joined by Lisa Vanarsdel playing flute. Together they gave the audience a peek at Albert Roussel’s Flute Players, Op. 27. While playing together their instruments almost leaped through the musical notes, cavorting together with a pure joy.

The final set featured the complete Gateway Chamber Ensemble, which is based around Austin Peay State University’s outstanding faculty, and includes many of the area’s leading professional musicians. They will be featured in the Community Concert Series  on Feburary 22nd, and I am looking forward to seeing them there! The 13 member group is conducted by Gregory Wolynec.

The Gateway Chamber Ensemble's conductor Gregory Wolynec

He had this to say about last night’s program:

“Essentially what we had, was this hotbed of activity going that on in Paris between the wars, especially in the 20’s. We had this combination of Europeans; French but also Germans, Swiss, & Americans; from all disciplines whether it’s music, visual arts, or dance, sorta intermingling and creating just a really amazing numbers of possibilities. So we heard a little bit of Jazz, which was sorta the new thing coming from the US. Which was great,  because it’s the only truly American musical form. We combine that with people like Ravel, who were just getting back to the careers they had (before the war). That makes this just a really exciting program.”

Last night they enabled the audience to experience the Creation of the World, op 8ia (1922-23) by Darius Milhaud. The melody is as Chaotic and jumbled as the creation of the world really must have been, if only we had been there to witness it. Slowly the Gateway Chamber Ensemble managed to pull order from the chaos, and through them the true beauty of Milhaud’s magnificent creation shone through.

The Gateway Chamber Ensemble

The next concert scheduled at the Center for Excellence for the Creative Arts is part of the Community Concert Series on October 8th. Featuring the exceptional Gabriela Montero, whose visionary interpretations and unique improvisational gifts have won her a quickly expanding audience and a devoted following around the world. Born in Caracas Venezuela, Gabriela gave her first public performance at the age of five. She performed at the inauguration for President Obama. In both recital and after performing a concerto, Gabriela often invites her audience to participate in asking for a melody for improvisations. They ask for themes from a Mozart Symphony to Star Wars. Gabriela says, “Because improvisation is such a huge part of who I am, it is the most natural and spontaneous way I can express myself. I have been improvising since my hands first touched the keyboard, but for many years I kept this aspect of my playing secret.”

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The great figures of all artistic genres came and worked in the city. But what inspired them? Maybe it was the music, created by other artists seeking the inspiration provided by Paris.

That eclectic blend of music will be the focus of the next Dimensions New Music Series Concert, “Paris Between the Wars: 1919 – 1939.” The free concert, which begins at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 14 in the APSU Concert Hall, will feature works by a wide range of musicians swept up by the city’s creativity.

The APSU Concert Hall

Jeffrey Wood, APSU professor of music

“Paris rebounded from World War I with frenetic jubilation and a burst of artistic creativity,” Jeffrey Wood, APSU professor of music, said. “Young composers like Darius Milhaud, as well as more established names such as Maurice Ravel, were heavily influenced by the rise of American jazz.

“Other composers were experimenting with new harmonies and melodies in their music, and the juxtaposition of French composers with composers from the United States and as far away as Brazil made for a tremendously exciting and lively musical environment.”

The evening’s program will include music by Albert Roussel and Heitor Villa-Lobos, as well as major, jazz-inspired works by Ravel and Milhaud.

“The concert will feature APSU professors Emily Hanna Crane, violin, Lisa Vanarsdel, flute, Stanley Yates, guitar, pianists Patricia Halbeck and Jeffrey Wood, and the Gateway Chamber Ensemble performing Milhaud’s ground breaking jazz ballet score ‘The Creation of the World’ under the direction of Gregory Wolynec,” Wood said.

The Gateway Chamber Ensemble

The concert is free and open to the public. The Dimensions New Music Series, sponsored by the APSU Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, has brought free performances of contemporary and world music to the Clarksville area since 1980.

For information on the concert, contact Wood at 931-221-7819 or .

Both performances were held at the National Radio Hall, a major performance venue in the city, and were broadcast on Romanian National Radio.

APSU Professor Stanley Yates

Yates’ first concert was a solo recital of music including guitar arrangements of two suites by Johann Sebastian Bach and a long-lost concert work by the 19th century guitar virtuoso Giulio Regondi.

For the second performance, Yates was a soloist with the Romanian National Radio Orchestra in a presentation of an early 19th century concerto for guitar and orchestra by Johann Baotiste Viotti. This performance was sold out.

Yates visited Romania last summer to film concert and interview footage for an eight-part documentary series on the classical guitar for Romanian National Television.

He has been invited back to Romania for a solo recital later this year sponsored by the American Embassy in Bucharest. He will be accompanying Romanian violin virtuoso Alexandru Tomescu in concerts in the U.S. and Europe in the 2010-11 concert season.

The program features Paul Binkley on guitar playing music from his Christmas CD “Do You Hear What I Hear”. Paul is a former Austin Peay music student, spent five years performing with the Grammy Award winning band Alabama, and is currently president of Grand Vista Music, a Nashville-based recording company.

The concert will also showcase members of the APSU Music Department faculty including: singers Tom King, Sharon Mabry, and Gail Robinson-Oturu; pianists Anne Glass and Jeff Wood; violinist Emily Crane; woodwind players Lisa Vanarsdel and Jeanette Zyko; brass players Francis Massinon, Richard Steffen, and Chris Vivio; guitarist Stanley Yates; and percussionists Richard Frey and David Steinquest. Karen Sorenson and Ted Jones from Languages and Literature will provide narration.

Selections from Paul’s recording will include fresh arrangements of holiday favorites such as “O Holy Night”, “Little Drummer Boy”, “Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming”, “I Wonder as I Wander”, “Ave Maria”, “Carol of the Bells”, “Silent Night”, and “Away in a Manger”. The program also includes James Taylor’s version of “Some Children See Him” and Michael McDonald’s song “Peace”, and instrumental settings of “Bring a Torch Jeannette, Isabella” and “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”.

Tickets are $5.00 General Admission (APSU students get in free with I.D.) and will be available Monday, December 1, 2008 in the Music Office (MMC 139). For information, contact Norma Jean Smith at 221-7818.