The Brigham Young University School of Music will present a guest performance by pianist Keith Kirchoff Tuesday, June 26, at 7:30 p.m. in the Madsen Recital Hall. The concert will feature works composed by BYU music professor Michael Hicks.
The program will consist of six pieces: "Sophikos," "L’Épitaphe de Monk," "The Annunciation," "Mantikos," "The Idea of Domes" and "The Stations of the Cross."
Admission is free.
Composer and pianist Keith Kirchoff has performed throughout North America and much of Europe. A strong advocate for modern music, Kirchoff has premiered more than 100 new works and commissioned more than two dozen compositions. As part of his commitment to fostering new audiences for contemporary music, Kirchoff has appeared at colleges and universities across the country as a lecture-recitalist.
Kirchoff has played with orchestras throughout the U.S., performing a wide range of concerti, including the Boston premiere of Charles Ives’s Emerson Concerto and the world premiere of Matthew McConnell’s Concerto for Toy Piano. Kirchoff has won awards from the Steinway Society, MetLife Meet the Composer and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and he was named the 2011 Distinguished Scholar by the SMSA.
Michael Hicks’s choral, chamber and solo works have been performed and recorded by BYU artists and other performers such as the New York Piano Trio, Black Swamp Saxophone Quartet and Memphis Symphony Brass Quintet. His chamber music may be heard on the CDs "Found Horizon" (1994), "Late Conversations" (1996) and "Ritual Grounds" (2003), all on the Tantara label, which in 2007 also issued his singer-songwriter album "Valentine St."
He has authored five books: "Mormonism and Music: A History" (1989), "Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions" (1999), "Henry Cowell, Bohemian" (2002), "Christian Wolff" (co-authored with Christian Asplund, 2012), and "The Street-Legal Version of Mormon’s Book" (forthcoming 2012).
He has twice won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award (1994 and 2003) for his writing about music and was editor of the journal "American Music," a post he held from 2007–2010. His poetry, meanwhile, has been published in "Dialogue" "BYU Studies," "Literature and Belief," "Sunstone" and in the anthologies "Cadence of Hooves" (2008), "New Poets of the American West" (2010) and "Fire in the Pasture" (2011).
This musical event is the 202nd performance sponsored by the BYU School of Music for the 2011-2012 season.
For more information, visit www.keithkirchoff.com.
Writer: Preston Wittwer
