Professor Michael Bell’s Classical Piano Composition To Be Featured At The Wisconsin Alliance Of Composers Annual New Music Festival On April 16th

C&E Soc Department Chair and Philip David Lowe Professor, Michael Bell is a long-time composer and musician. One of his classical piano compositions concerning the embrace of our ties to community and environment has been accepted for the Wisconsin Alliance of Composers Annual New Music Festival, to be held on April 16th at UW-Whitewater. Calvin Guse, a UW School of Music pianist will perform it. 

The piece is called “Encomia,” and it has three movements in praise of the socio-environmental.

— Movement I: Planxty Claude 

— Movement II: A Spring Walk, Forward and Up

— Movement III: Essay on Wise Beauty

The meaning of the first movement’s title is perhaps a bit obscure. It references the composer Claude Debussy and his development of “impressionism” with its emphasis on feeling in our experience of the natural.

The meaning of the second movement references the springing of joy, and the joy of spring, in that felt experience (which is appropriate for when the piece will be performed).

The meaning of the third movement adds a bit of caution, though, not to be unreflective about the beauty of the environment, lest we love it to death.

The concert will be free and open to the public.