WILLIAM WARFIELD TO PERFORM WITH KU SYMPHONIC BAND

LAWRENCE -- The University of Kansas Symphonic Band will perform an All-American Concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 13, in the Lied Center.

The 57-piece Symphonic Band is conducted by Robert E. Foster, KU director of bands, assisted by Naoya Takizawa, Tokyo graduate student.

Guest soloists for this concert include William Warfield, who will both sing his signature piece, "Old Man River," from the musical "Showboat" by Jerome Kern, and narrate "A Lincoln Portrait" by Aaron Copland. Alice Downs, KU associate professor of piano, will be featured in a performance of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."

Foster said Copland wrote "A Lincoln Portrait" at the suggestion that he compose a musical portrait of a great American to express the "magnificent spirit of our country."

The composition is roughly divided into three sections. In the opening, there is a suggestion of a mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln's personality as well as something of his gentleness and simplicity of spirit.

A quick middle section briefly sketches the background of the times he lived, Foster said. This merges into the concluding section, which draws a simple but impressive frame about the words of Lincoln himself.

The concert will open with Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man," one of the most popular and most recognized of all symphonic fanfares.

Other works on the program include

• Symphony No. 1 by Don Gillis, a work premiered by the Joliet (Ill.) High School band in 1953, which tells the story of the composer's early life in Cameron, Mo.
• "The Gladiator," a march written by John Philip Sousa and edited by Foster, which was Sousa's first work to sell more than a million copies.
• "Suite of Old American Dances" by Robert Russell Bennett, a Kansas City, Kan., native. Foster said Bennett gained fame for his scoring of some of Broadway's greatest hits, including "The Sound of Music," "Camelot," "My Fair Lady," and "The King and I," but his two original compositions for band stand alone in the wind band repertoire as examples of his creativity, his cleverness and wit, and his orchestrational genius.
• "Barnum and Bailey's Favorite," a 1913 circus march by Karl L. King, former band leader with Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth.

Since his debut recital in New York's Town Hall in March 1950, Warfield has been recognized as one of the leading vocal artists of the century. His 25th anniversary was celebrated in March 1975 with a Carnegie Hall benefit for the Duke Ellington Cancer Center.

Warfield attended the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, N.Y., on a scholarship for first prize in the National Music Education League Competition. He received a bachelor's degree, then entered military service before returning to Eastman to study for a master's degree. He joined the national touring company of "Call Me Mister" before signing a contract with MGM to portray Joe the dock hand in "Showboat." He went on to star in the title role in Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" and as "De Lawd" in the Hallmark Hall of Fame productions of "The Green Pastures" on NBC television in 1957 and 1959.

In March 1984 he won a Grammy Award for the Spoken Word category for his narration of "A Lincoln Portrait" accompanied by the Eastman Philharmonic Orchestra. Since 1984, he has been touring the country singing in oratorio, opera and solo concerts. He was chair of the voice department at the University of Illinois, Urbana, until 1990. In 1993-94, he served as a visiting professor of voice at the University of Texas at San Antonio and, in 1994, was appointed professor of music at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.

Downs has been a member of the KU music faculty since 1978. She holds a master of music degree in piano from Michigan State University, East Lansing, and has performed solo and chamber music recitals in the United States and abroad. She was a Fulbright scholar in France and returned to Europe in 1976 at the invitation of the Italian Academy of Science, Arts and Letters to play a recital in memory of her teacher, Silvio Scionti. Downs has performed on two tours of Costa Rica as part of the Salmagundi Trio and has premiered compositions by John Pozdro, including an opera for children, which she commissioned as president of Concerts for Young People Inc. In spring 1997 Downs was named Outstanding Woman Teacher by the KU Commission on the Status of Women and the Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center.

General admission tickets for the band concert are now on sale at the KU box offices at the Lied Center, 864-ARTS; Murphy Hall, 864-3982; and Student Union Activities, Kansas Union, 864-3477. Tickets are $5 for the public and $4 for all students and senior citizens. VISA and MasterCard are accepted for telephone orders.

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