WMU

Alex Hayashi, Western Michigan University's oboe instructor, and Bruce Uchimura, director of the WMU Symphony Orchestra, join Cara Lieurance to preview a concert in which Hayashi will perform Bohuslav Martinu's Oboe Concerto with the orchestra. It's set for 4 pm on Sunday, Nov 10 in the Dalton Center Recital Hall. 

Three Kalamazoo Public School graduates at Western Michigan University have started a campus group trying to increase the number of minority teachers. Future Teachers of Color (FTC) was founded by three students in Western's College of Education: Sarah Giramia, Hailey Timmerman, and William Wright. It provides support and resources to minority students pursuing careers in teaching. Correction: an earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Sarah Giramia. 

The Western Winds, a chamber group featuring faculty and graduate students side-by-side on individual parts, offers a program of modern, romantic and neo-Baroque works at 7:30 pm Monday, Nov 4 in the Dalton Center Recital Hall. Graduate student Brittany Bissa and Dr. Scott Boerma, Director of Bands at WMU, joined Cara Lieurance to preview the program. 

Composer David Colson, who founded the new music ensemble Birds On A Wire not long after joining the WMU School of Music in 2007, previewed the group's concert with Cara Lieurance. It's set for  7:30 pm on Wednesday, Oct 30 in the Dalton Center Recital Hall. Not only is it "themed" for Halloween, it will feature the world premiere of Colson's Ghost Music, a new piece for solo marimba. Colson talks about writing the pieces for Matthew Coley, a leading solo percussionist and a master of an array of global percussion instruments.

Western Michigan University's Jazz Masters Series will present one of the foremost jazz bassists of today at 7:30 pm Thursday, Oct 24 in the Dalton Center Recital Hall, in a concert that will also feature student jazz ensembles and the Western Jazz Collective, a faculty group.  John Patitucci has united different worlds from the beginning, as a musician who splits his time between instruments (the electric and acoustic bass), coasts (raised in Brooklyn, NY and California) and music (jazz, pop, classical, African, Latin and more). In a conversation with Cara Lieurance and WMU professor of drums Keith Hall, Patitucci speaks in depth about the meaning of music, its power of communication, and the higher purpose it can serve in the world.