World Premiere: 'Tennessee Williams Songs' by Bruce Trinkley and friends

The Penn State School of Music will present a world premiere of "Tennessee Williams Songs" by Professor Emeritus of Music Bruce Trinkley. The performance is a multimedia celebration of the 110th anniversary of the birth of Tennessee Williams. who was born March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi.

Performers include School of Music voice faculty members Rachel Copeland, soprano; Raymond Sage, baritone, and School of Theatre emeritus faculty Helen Manfull and Charles Dumas, readers. The string quartet includes School of Music professors James Lyon, violin; Timothy Deighton, viola; emerita faculty Joanne Feldman, violin, and cellist Carol Lyon. Richard Roland, who holds a 2016 master of fine arts degree from Penn State, is the director. Roland is currently assistant professor of theater, drama, and contemporary dance, and head of the Bachelor of Fine Arts Musical Theatre Program at Indiana University Bloomington.

About the work:
"Tennessee Williams Songs" are settings for voice and string quartet of poems by Tennessee Williams from "The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams," copyrighted 1925-95 by the University of the South and used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt Inc. for the Estate of Tennessee Williams (all rights reserved).

"Tennessee Williams Songs" was composed during Trinkley's residency at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in Temecula, California in March 2017. The cycle was transcribed for voice and string quartet in State College, Pennsylvania, in September and October 2020. The string quartet version is dedicated by Trinkley to all those who are battling or have suffered from the coronavirus pandemic.

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