Emmanuel Music continues "John Harbison and His World," its eight-concert, season-long tribute to the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and Institute Professor John Harbison, with the Boston premiere of "Moments of Vision" on Sunday, Feb. 1 at 4 p.m. at Emmanuel Lutheran Church (15 Newbury St., Boston).
Composed in 1975 for Renaissance Consort and based on poems of Thomas Hardy, "Moments" premiered in Northampton, Mass., in 1989. The 23-minute piece includes late medieval elements, such as chord progressions found in the 14th century music of Francesco Landini and Johannes Ciconia. Recent literary scholarship has shown early music intrigued Hardy.
Tickets are $22, or $50 for patrons and $18 for students and seniors. For more information, call (617) 536-3356 or e-mail music@emmanuelmusic.org.
Harbison Series at MIT
The Emmanuel Music Harbison Series comes to Killian Hall on April 18 and 25, with programs strongly connected to MIT. Both concerts are free and begin at 4 p.m.
The April 18 program will feature composers connected to Harbison at various stages of his career. One is jazz musician John Halle, son of Institute Professor Morris Halle of linguistics and his wife, Rosamond Halle. Young Halle studied with Harbision in Genoa in 1989. Now a professor of music at Yale University and a Green Party city council member in New Haven, Conn., Halle will be represented by his elegant, inventive concert rag, "Rozology."
"Monk Trope," Harbison's contribution to a 25-movement cycle of variations on Thelonius Monk's "'Round Midnight," commissioned by Italian pianist Emmanuele Arciuli, will be included in the April 18 concert. Harbison, who once taught MIT's jazz history courses, will also offer improvisations on Monk standards.
"Variations" (1980), one of only three Harbison pieces that received its first Boston performance at MIT, will conclude the program.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on January 28, 2004.
