Tibetan Singing Bowls, which date back more than 2,500 years, are ordinarily used by meditating Buddhists, producing sounds which invoke a deep state of relaxation. They also are ordinarily found in temples, monasteries and medication halls, rather than on the stage of the Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall at Illinois State University.
But David Collier, director of Percussion Studies at Illinois State's School of Music, will use the Tibetan Singing Bowls in his world premiere performance of composer David Maslanka's David's Book for Solo Percussionist and Wind Ensemble at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 16.
Admission to the concert, which is part of the School of Music's Gold Series, is $10 for the general public, $8 for faculty-staff and $7 for students and senior citizens. Tickets are available at the CPA box office from noon to 5 p.m. weekdays or by calling (309) 438-2535. Tickets also are available on line at Ticketmaster.com
The concert also will include the world premiere performance of composer Jack Stamp's Symphony No. 1. Stamp is professor of music and conductor of bands at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the former chairman of the Division of Fine Arts at Campbell University in North Carolina. Among his other awards, in 2000, Stamp was inducted into the prestigious American Bandmasters Association. He is founder and conductor of the Keystone Wind Ensemble.
David's Book was commissioned by a consortium of university wind ensembles and was written for Collier and the Illinois State University Wind Symphony, which is directed by Director of Bands Stephen Steele. The five-movement concerto focuses on the unique timbral aspects and emotional expressions of an extensive collection of percussion instruments, including the Tibetan Singing Bowls.
Maslanka, who employs several of J.S. Bach's chorale melodies as thematic material throughout the work, wrote for 22 different chromatic pitches. In order to achieve that, Collier asked Shakti Gray of Bodhisattva Trading Company to create a set of bowls to those exact pitches. Gray painstakingly analyzed the pitch frequencies of each of the antique bowls in order to build the one-of-a-kind set for Collier.
A Massachusetts-based composer with a long-standing relationship with Illinois State's band program, Maslanka said "Music is about spirit, and about finding one's connection to 'bigger' self and to universals. "The word 'book' (in David's Book)gives the feeling of a larger collection of material, something extensive and varied, something that may have a story to tell." Maslanka said there are two Davids involved - himself and Collier, for whom the piece was written.
In addition to his University duties, Collier is timpanist with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and the Illinois Chamber Orchestra. He is also active as a freelance percussionist and has performed with many top artists, including, most recently, Marvin Hamlisch and Joel Gray. He is a bachelor's degree graduate of Florida State University, master's degree graduate of Indiana University and has his doctorate from the University of Illinois.
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