Locklair’s work released on CD, available online

November 1, 2011

Dan Locklair’s Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, conducted by Gerard Schwarz with Susan Bates as organ soloist, is a part of a new 3-CD set released on Oct. 16 by The Eastern Music Festival and WCPE-FM in celebration of the 50th Anniversary Season of the Eastern Music Festival. Locklair is Wake Forest’s composer-in-residence and a professor of music.

Locklair’s solo organ work, In Mystery and Wonder (The Casavant Diptych) with Marilyn Keiser as organ soloist, was broadcast nationally the week of Oct. 3 over the syndicated radio program, Pipedreams. The program, #1140 entitled Manifold Blessings, is available on the web at: http://pipedreams.publicradio.org/listings/2011/1140/

In addition, Locklair’s Trumpets of Light for trumpet and organ was premiered by trumpeter Lorraine Cohen and organist Matthew Phelps on Oct. 23 at The Reformed Church of Bronxville in New York. It was part of a concert to dedicate the church’s new David Harris organ console.

About the new work, Locklair said: “My Trumpets of Light (A Suite in Four Movements for Trumpet & Organ) was composed between March and June 2011. It is dedicated to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Mr. & Mrs. Mark J. Welshimer, who funded the commission from The Reformed Church of Bronxville New York (Matthew Phelps, Minister of Music and Eugene Lavery, Associate Director of Music) for the Autumn 2011 dedication of the church’s new David Harris organ console. Approximately fourteen minutes in length, each movement of Trumpets of Light is extra-musically inspired by a biblical scripture. The common thread of these scriptures is light, an understandable link given the fact that the beautiful Reformed Church’s natural light sources are the 1944-1945 windows by Boston stain-glass artist, Charles J. Connick. Linking the movements together musically is one melodic idea, first heard in Proclamation, which is transformed in each movement. Economical harmonic movement is also a trait of each movement.”