The Master Players Concert Series will present the Donald Sinta Quartet in a Valentine's Day concert at 8 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 14, in the Gore Recital Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts.

Feb. 14: Donald Sinta Quartet

Master Players' first spring concert is popular Valentine's Day concert

TEXT SIZE

3:28 p.m., Jan. 28, 2015--The University of Delaware Master Players Concert Series will present the Donald Sinta Quartet in a Valentine’s Day concert at 8 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 14, in the Gore Recital Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts.

The Donald Sinta Quartet, featuring four outstanding saxophonists, was the winner of the grand prize at the prestigious Concert Artist Guild International Competition held in New York City in 2014. 

Events Stories

June 5: Blue Hen 5K

University of Delaware graduates planning to attend Alumni Weekend are encouraged to register for the annual Blue Hen 5K walk and run, which will be held Sunday morning, June 5.

June 6-9: Food and culture series

The 20th annual June Lecture Series at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UD in Wilmington will be held June 6-9. Titled 'June a la Carte,' this year's program focuses on great political documents, feminism, world politics and a Newark cuisine sampler.

The quartet’s Master Players debut will feature romantic and energetic compositions by American icons Bolcom and Barber, as well as European giants Dvořák, Schubert, Grieg, Shostakovich and others. 

The Valentine’s Day post-concert dessert reception is open to all concert attendees, which allows all audience members to meet the sensational performers in the lobby of the Roselle Center for the Arts.

About the quartet

The Donald Sinta Quartet has earned praise from audiences and critics alike for its virtuosic performances, compelling recordings and distinctive repertoire.

In addition to the Concert Artist Guild International Competition prize, other competition successes include the first prize of the 2013 CAG Victor Elmaleh Competition, the Alice Coleman Grand Prize at the 2013 Coleman Chamber Music Competition, and first prize in the 2012 North American Saxophone Alliance Quartet Competition.

The quartet’s busy summer 2014 itinerary included such festivals as Music from Angel Fire, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Chautauqua Institution and Princeton Summer Concerts, as well as a performance at the Detroit Institute of Arts. 

During the 2014-15 season, the quartet makes its New York recital debut at Weill Recital Hall as part of the CAG New York Concerts series. In addition to its performance at UD, other featured engagements are Purdue University Convocations, Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, Regina Quick Center for the Performing Arts at St. Bonaventure University, Corpus Christi Chamber Music Society and Market Square Concerts.

The quartet was featured for the world premiere performance of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom's Concerto Grosso for Saxophone Quartet and Band, joining the University of Michigan Symphony Band as a soloist for a tour through China and Los Angeles. Performances took place at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the Shanghai Conservatory. The quartet's subsequent recording of the work garnered praise, as Audiophile Audition declared them "superb musicians" and American Record Guide called it "the highlight of the album."

Recent highlights abroad include recitals in St. Andrews, Scotland, where the group was featured at the 16th World Saxophone Congress, and performances in Paris and Thessaloniki, Greece, as well as a trip to Japan as one of a select group of ensembles chosen for the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition.

The quartet's repertoire is diverse, ranging from commissions by today's emerging composers to standards from the saxophone quartet literature to transcriptions by master composers such as Dvorak, Schubert and Shostakovich. As advocates of new music, it commissions and premieres new works regularly and runs the National Saxophone Quartet Composition Competition, which selects two new quartet works from up-and-coming composers annually.

The group is named for its mentor, legendary University of Michigan saxophone professor Donald Sinta. The quartet’s members are Selmer Paris Artists and perform on Selmer Paris Saxophones.

The state-of-the-art Gore Recital Hall only seats 200 and those interested in attending are encouraged to purchase their tickets in advance. Advance tickets are available by calling 302-831-2204. Tickets for all events are $25 for adults; $20 for senior adults, alumni, faculty and staff; and $10 for students with ID. This season, online purchase for tickets and pre-paid parking vouchers is available to all Master Players audience members.  

Master Players concerts this spring

The world premiere of a new project for Master Players, the original work Campus Chatter: A New Musical, will be held at 8 p.m., Friday, March 20, and Saturday, March 21, in Mitchell Hall.

For those who plan to attend, note that Campus Chatter contains mature language and themes, and parental discretion is strongly advised.

The production concerns the lives of college students. Pursuing a degree in higher education continues to be a rite of passage to adulthood for many Americans. But, as the college population has risen since the 1970s, and the times have changed from beanies and separate dorms with curfews to campus violence and more diversity than ever faced before, the realities of today’s college life have inspired a team of talented local artisans, according to UD’s Xiang Gao, Trustees Distinguished Professor of Music and producing artistic director.

Based on interviews with college students conducted in 2012-13, Scott F. Mason, senior associate director with University Student Centers and an award-winning local playwright, has created 12 characters facing challenges common to all 21st-century college students. They include an over-achieving African American on a predominantly white campus, a drug-dependent and competitive student leader with a dark secret, a transgender student (woman to man), an international student struggling with American idioms, a Christian-raised young woman with a Muslim father questioning her faith, a closeted gay football player coping with intolerance, and others dealing with the harsh challenges of campus shootings, cyberbullying, bystanders, alcohol and generally just “fitting in” while establishing ones own “identity.”

In 15 songs by Gao, an internationally-celebrated musician and 2014 Governor’s Award recipient, and Joyce Hill Stoner, Off-Broadway and New York Fringe lyricist, the students sing songs such as the Rotten Roommate Rap, discuss “PLDs” (poor life decisions) and dance to a Bollywood number Strange American Way.

The musical, though provocative and thought-provoking, is also fun and funny and leaves the audience to debate its own perceptions, misperceptions and judgments, Gao said.

The cast consists of college students and community members with direction by Brian M. Touchette, musical direction by Marji Eldreth and choreography by Jody Anderson, who has danced with the Alvin Ailey company. Set design is by Qi Wei, who co-designed the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, and William Browning, designer for UD’s Resident Ensemble Players (REP), and light design is by Steve Litterst. UD’s acclaimed Art Department professor David Brinley is contributing his original illustrations for the set of the stage. Also, Broadway veteran Larry Raiken contributed additional material to the script.

One of the goals of the artistic team, after the full-length version opens in March, is to reimagine and produce a shorter version of the show that could tour high schools and colleges to help spread important messages about contemporary life for young adults entering a challenging and complex society, Gao said.

The season finale will be the ever-popular iMUSIC 8: CSI: Beethoven, A Chamber Music Play to be staged at 8 p.m., Saturday, April 18, and at 3 p.m., Sunday, April 19, in Mitchell Hall. Note the special Sunday concert time designed to appeal to a family audience.

The very popular multimedia concert iMusic, an annual season finale created and performed by Gao, will have its eighth production this spring.

The concert is an annual multimedia season finale for family audiences ages 5 and older and this year will present the world premiere of a new genre, a chamber music play to celebrate German culture and German-American heritage.

This new work is a theatrical concert exploring the genius' unsurpassed chamber music, personal life, deafness and mysterious death. It is written and directed by the acclaimed playwright and director Didi Balle with music research by UD faculty music historian Maria Anne Purciello, and is being conceived for Gao and guest musicians and actors invited by Master Players.

This is a new production based on and inspired by the original symphonic play version of CSI: Beethoven created, commissioned and premiered by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Marin Alsop, with its playwright-in-residence and stage director, Balle. During the production, many never before seen images of Beethoven provided by the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San José State University will be presented to the audience. 

This event is made possible by the President's Diversity Initiative fund at the University of Delaware.

Master Players programs are made possible, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. Other sponsors include the UD Vita Nova Restaurant and the Courtyard by Marriott Newark-University of Delaware Hotel.

News Media Contact

University of Delaware
Communications and Public Affairs
302-831-NEWS
publicaffairs@udel.edu

UDaily is produced by
Communications and Public Affairs

The Academy Building
105 East Main Street
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716 | USA
Phone: (302) 831-2792
email: publicaffairs@udel.edu
www.udel.edu/cpa