The School of Music has several exciting events coming in the next week. Our spring opera, Elixir of Love, opens this Friday through Sunday at the Englert Theatre, downtown Iowa City. Stage director Bill Theisen returns to direct Donizetti’s delightful comic opera.
The following Tuesday, May 3, one of our most celebrated and esteemed alumni saxophonist Eugene Rousseau, returns to our stage to perform a benefit concert for the School of Music’s new building. Rousseau, who received a UI Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1998, will perform with both student and faculty classical ensembles during the first half of the concert, featuring works by Hindemith, Beethoven and Heiden.
The second half will feature Rousseau on saxophone and clarinet with the Johnson County Landmark jazz band under the direction of John Rapson. Selections will include the standards ‘Round Midnight, Body and Soul, Harlem Nocturne and Woodchoppers’ Ball.
The May 3 concert will be the first event in raising resources for the new music building, to be located in downtown Iowa City. The Voxman Music Building was abandoned after it was heavily damaged by the 2008 Iowa River flood, and the School of Music is now operating out of several temporary locations.
Tickets for the opera and benefit concert are available through the Englert Theatre Box Office.
The proceeds from this concert will only be used to fund the non-Federal share of the project cost or for project improvements and will not be used to duplicate any benefit under the Public Assistance Program of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. If any gift is associated with any naming recognition at a specific gift level, the naming is not any indication that the funds were used to construct any specific space or portion of space in the building, but is a recognition naming opportunity for a certain level of gift.
