On Tuesday, Feb. 25, the UMass Amherst Department of Music and Dance will present its third annual Bezanson Legacy Concert featuring works by composers with ties to the university’s music program. The event is held each year to recognize the legacy of acclaimed composer and former department chair Philip Bezanson. The concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Bezanson Recital Hall, and is free and open to the public.
This year’s program will feature “Blow Out the Candles of Your Cake” by professor emeritus and former Fine Arts Center director Frederick Tillis, who turned ninety last month. An internationally renowned educator and composer, Tillis helped to attract major jazz icons like Billy Taylor, Max Roach and Archie Shepp to the UMass faculty during the 1970’s and 80’s, and worked with Taylor to found the UMass Jazz in July program.
The February 25 concert will also include Stanley Charkey’s “Vermont Songs,” Jazer Giles’s “Sturmian Word,” William Karlins’s “Blues for Saxophone Quartet,” department chair Salvatore Macchia’s “En Trouvant les tombeaux,” Javier Marquez’s “Piano Sonata No. 2 in B Major” and Robert Stern’s “Fantasy Etude.”
Faculty performers will include Jamie-Rose Guarrine, soprano; Fredric T. Cohen, oboe; Jonathan Hulting-Cohen, saxophone; Rémy Taghavi, bassoon; and Nadine Shank, piano; along with the student-led Rebel Saxophone Quartet.