UpDate - Vol. 13, No. 2, Page 4
September 9, 1993
Fellowship recital scheduled for Newark Sept. 17

     Oboist Lloyd Shorter, administrator of music programs at the
University and a 1993 Individual Artist Fellow of the Delaware State Arts
Council, will give his fellowship recital at 8 p.m., Friday, Sept. 17, at
the Newark United Methodist Church, 69 East Main Street.
     Shorter will be accompanied by Julie Nishimura, accompanist and coach
in the music department, in the first part of the recital, playing music by
Cimarosa, Bozza, Granados, Kalabis and Shorter.
     In the second part of the program, he will be joined by seven other
musicians-playing the oboe, horn, clarinet and bassoon to perform harmonie
arrangements-18th century arrangements of Mozart's operas for small musical
groups.
     Shorter is a native of Wilmington and a graduate of Brandywine High
School. Starting to play the oboe in fourth grade, he continued his musical
studies at Ithaca College and with Louis Rosenblatt of the Philadelphia
Orchestra, becoming a freelance oboist in the Philadelphia area before
coming to the University.
     He performs regionally as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician
with the Grand Chamber Players, the Del'Arte Wind Quintet, I Fiati (a
woodwind quintet) and the Delaware Symphony Orchestra.
     He was a soloist in the nationally distributed PBS production, A
Brandywine Christmas, at the 1990 Wilmington Music Festival and the 1988
American Choral Directors Association convention. He also has recorded with
the Paul Winter Consort.
     Shorter, who is the University oboe instructor, directs the Saturday
AM Music program, which trains future music teachers.
     Shorter also plays oboe in a Philadelphia-based ensemble Relache,
whose specialty is music by living composers. A tongue-in-cheek name,
Relache means "no concert tonight." Consisting of percussion, piano,
bassoon, viola, clarinet and flute, in addition to the oboe, Relache has
toured major cities in Europe. Last year the group was invited to play at
the Prague Spring Festival, later playing in Lithuania. Most recently, the
group was asked to perform at New York's Lincoln Center and received
favorable notice in The New York Times.
     A proponent of contemporary music, Shorter has performed as resident
oboist at the 1991 Composer to Composer conference in Telluride, Colo. He
also is participating in Music in Motion, a program promoting interaction
between new music groups and living composers. Through this program,
Shorter will meet with other musicians in Seattle three times this year and
next year in Florida.
     He says people should really listen and not be intimidated by
contemporary music. "Sound itself is music," he said, and cautions against
lumping all new music into one category. For example, one contemporary
composer, he said, is from Argentina and writes music with tango rhythms;
another has an Armenian background and his music is what Shorter describes
as "minimalist Armenian folk music."
     Shorter received the $5,000 grant from Delaware State Arts Council to
cover expenses in launching a solo career. He has used the funding thus far
to buy recording equipment that will accurately reproduce the sound of the
oboe. He also has invested in a new oboe as, unlike string instruments,
oboes do not mellow with age but become "blown out" and the intonation
becomes unstable.
     Speaking of his ongoing love affair with the oboe, Shorter said it is
"constant toil, drudgery, expense and labor intensive," as each day he has
to carve a new reed for his instrument and practice lengthy hours. On the
other hand, it is worth the effort: The sound is unique and has captivated
him.
                                        -Sue Swyers Moncure