Music Fills the Montecito Air

Westmont student musicians and composers show off their talents at free concerts this week in Westmont’s Deane Chapel on lower campus. For more information, please contact the music department at (805) 565-6040.

The Composer’s Concert, highlighting original works by Westmont student composers and performers, is Friday, November 8, at 7 pm. “The concert is an outlet for bright, young, new composers to see their own works realized in a legitimate setting that allows the audience to become the first in the world to experience that realization,” says Jared Clarke, a junior music composition major.

The Vocal Chamber Concert will feature the Westmont Chamber Singers, a select 10-member ensemble drawn from the Westmont College Choir and under the direction of Grey Brothers, on Sunday, November 10, at 7 pm. They will sing a varied program of music composed from the late Renaissance through the present. “The one-hour program will include music by Renaissance Italian, English, and Dutch composers, including two madrigals and two works for the Christmas season, William Byrd’s ‘Hodie Christus natus est’ and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s ‘Gaude et laetare,’” Brothers says. A centerpiece of the program will be a performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s early Baroque masterpiece “Lamento della ninfa,” sung by a quartet of voices accompanied by cellist Logan Hodgson and pianist Emma Mitchell.