Composer Pousseur focus of UB music events

UB’s Music Library and the Robert & Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music will present a pair of events this month focusing on the life and work of Belgian composer Henri Pousseur.

A lecture examining Pousseur’s tenure as a member of the UB faculty from 1966-68 — he was Slee Visiting Professor of Music from 1966-67 — and his collaboration with French writer Michel Butor will take place at 5 p.m. Oct. 12 in 327 Baird Hall. Titled "The Utopian Bargain of Henri Pousseur's 'Votre Faus,'" it will be given by composer and independent scholar Andre Bregegere.  

The following evening, a concert featuring the music of Pousseur and recent graduates of UB’s PhD program in composition will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall.

Faculty performers include Jonathan Golove, cello; Eric Huebner, piano; and Tiffany Du Mouchelle, soprano.

Before the concert, a roundtable discussion and short performance will take place at 4 p.m. in the Music Library on the first floor of Baird Hall.

The concert, this year’s Wolf-Steger Fund Concert which spotlights the work of Buffalo composers, is funded by an endowment from the late UB music faculty member Muriel Wolf and her husband, bassist Albert Steger, a longtime member of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

In conjunction with these events, an exhibit chronicling Pousseur’s stint as a UB faculty member is on view in the Music Library through Jan. 12.

The exhibit, curated by Associate Librarian John Bewley, features concert programs, photographs, newspaper reviews, and manuscripts and typescripts created by Pousseur. Much of the content is related to the March 17, 1968 performance of the concert version of Pousseur’s opera “Votre Faust.”

The exhibit also is available online, with additional content.

The lecture, concert and exhibit are all free and open to the public.

For a complete and up-to-date list of all concerts being presented by the UB Department of Music, please visit www.slee.buffalo.edu.