By Amy Nicholson

Old-fashioned comedy, catchy show tunes and happy endings are all part of the show "Lucky Stiff," opening at Heritage Theatre in Perry this weekend.

Jacob Thompson of Deweyville is directing the show, which he saw for the first time about 10 years ago. "It is fun and fresh," he said.

Thompson said he caught the bug for acting and directing a little later in life than most. Although he had played the part of an orphan in a production of "Oliver" at the age of 8, and participated in high school choir, he didn't re-enter the theater arena again until he was 21.

"The theater has a unique way of entertaining, educating and enlightening people. Some shows leave a mark on your spirit. Others help you relax," Thompson said.

"Lucky Stiff" is more along the lines of pure entertainment, he said.

Thompson believes the lighthearted storyline is just what audiences are craving during current tough economic times.

"I like to see the vision that I have unfold on the stage. It's not something made with my hands like other art mediums, but it is still something to be proud of," he said of the directing experience.

The cast has 10 characters, five principal actors, four actors who play several more minor characters, and one actor playing a dead guy for the duration.

The plot

As the plot unfolds, lead character Harry Witherspoon, a shy shoe salesman from England, receives word that a distant uncle has been shot and killed. He has left his estate of $6 million to Harry, but only if Harry follows his instructions.

Harry is told that his uncle would never miss a vacation for anything, not even death, and his final wish was to take a trip to Monte Carlo.

In "Weekend at Bernie's" fashion, Harry hauls the corpse around in a wheelchair, irritated by the things he must do, but also liberated from his boring life and excited to be on an adventure.

If Harry, played by Brett Johnson of Layton, fails to carry out his uncle's wishes, the $6 million will go to a charity that benefits dogs.

Sarah Johnson, who in real life is married to Brett Johnson, plays the part of Annabel Glick, a sweet charity worker who shows up on Harry's adventure, determined to watch his every move and take the money if he makes a mistake.

The Johnsons met while singing in a show choir at Utah State University. The two married 10 years ago and have three sons, ages 7, 4 and 1.

Both enjoy acting and try to do at least one show per year despite their busy family life.

"Theater is our hobby. We try to get away and do it whenever we can," Sarah Johnson said.

The play is a fun one, she said: "It has a little twist and a fun ending you'd never expect."

Playing together

Another couple, Bree Hoskisson and Derek Hendricks of Roy, are also cast in the show. The two have been dating for the past five years and frequently appear in shows together, participating in about five shows each per year.

Hoskisson plays Rita, a hard-edged chain smoker from New York who totes a gun and is determined to get her hands on the $6 million she says was stolen from her.

She pulls her brother, Vinnie Di Ruzzio, a quiet optometrist played by Hendricks, into the plot and spends a lot of time pushing him around.

Hoskisson is currently pursuing a musical theater degree at Weber State University, and Hendricks earned his associate's degree in theater from Western Wyoming Community College.

"We have a song together. It is the first time we've gotten to sing onstage -- just the two of us," Hoskisson said.

the original story can be found here.

By Becky Wright

Carey Ann Francis spent most of her life in the ghettos of Texas cities like Dallas and Houston.

"They're horrible," she said, remembering the poverty, drug addiction and violence that surrounded her.

She left that life behind in 2009, when she moved to Ogden.

"We loaded up my Honda like the Beverly Hillbillies," she said. "I didn't take anything but my art with me."

Now enrolled at Weber State University, Francis is one of 28 students participating in the Spring 2012 BFA Thesis Exhibition.

The art exhibit opens with a reception from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. today, April 13, in the Kimball Visual Arts Center on campus. The exhibit, running through April 29, is the culmination of the students' undergraduate art studies.

Included in the display are samples of painting, drawing, sculpture, video, installation and more. The diversity of the art runs from lace tents by Venessa Gromek to David Powell's animated video, made using hundreds of chalk drawings. Gromek's art was inspired by her work in the outdoor industry; Powell's was inspired by loss and longing,

The art Francis is showing was inspired by her life in Texas.

"I was born in Austin," she said. "I moved to Houston, then Dallas, and a lot of little bitty subcities. ... They're covered in ghetto areas."

Lost and found

Francis, a grandmother on a waiting list for a kidney transplant, works mostly in oil and acrylic -- but rarely paints on canvas. Her art is created on objects that other people have thrown away, such as old doors, a cast-iron sink and metal pipes. It's something she's done since she started taking art classes in Texas.

"I wasn't spending money properly, so when the teacher would give an assignment, I didn't have a nice, clean canvas," she said. "I've adapted it now, and applied it into my paintings and it's working well."

Francis has stories to go with all of her artwork.

"I try to reflect all the way back to childhood," she said, adding that she was born in 1960. "Some of it's during the civil rights movement, and Jim Crow laws."

One of the paintings is about how things had changed by the time Francis was 6 years old.

"They didn't want us to pick cotton," she said. "They wanted us to get an eduction. They said, 'You've gotta learn to read and write.' ... I didn't really understand at the time, but now I do."

Lost

Francis painted a story of abuse and violence on a cast-off door from the late 1800s.

"It's about a girl in the ghetto getting shot over $15, by a drug dealer," she said. "She comes and buys more drugs from him, and he accepts money from her."

But she still owed him $15.

"He goes and gets a gun," Francis said. "The dealer pays drug addicts to drag her to a Dumpster. ... Nobody knew she was behind the Dumpster, because it smells bad anyway."

The door has an image of the shooting on one side, and a woman's dead, swollen body painted on the other.

"She was covered with ants, and the ants were taking her flesh away, back to their little house," said Francis.

Found

The painting "Negro Spiritual: Oh My Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord" focuses on the songs of slaves.

"We brought these spirituals with us, through our culture, because that was the way of prayer," Francis said. "It played a part in our upbringing, and our coming forth."

A mixed-media piece combining painting and newspaper collage, "And This Is My Friend," is about letting go of prejudice and hate.

"I had a best friend," Francis said. "Her name was Ginger, but she was a white girl."

Growing up with racism, Francis said, she was taught to feel hatred and hostility.

"I met her when I was 32 years old," she said of her friend. "Until I met her, I didn't know better from what I was taught. ... I found it's not about the color of your skin, but who you are as a person."

Francis says she learned that lesson late, but well.

"From that point on, I didn't have any hatred or hostility in my heart anymore," she said.

PREVIEW

• WHAT: Spring 2012 BFA Thesis Exhibition
• WHEN: Opens with a reception 7-9 p.m. today, April 13; continues 11 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays, noon-5 p.m. Saturdays, through April 29
• WHERE: Kimball Visual Arts Center, Weber State University, 3848 Harrison Blvd., Ogden
• ADMISSION: Free; 801-626-7689

The original story can be found here.

The Weber State University performing arts department’s 2011-2012 theater season came to a close with the showing of a completely student-run production, The Cradle Will Rock. The show was put on by the Associated Actors and Technicians.

“I love the student-directed stuff here just because it really shows the intense dedication,” said Shauna Ross, who has recently joined AAT and was house manager for the performances, enabling her to see the show several times.

The show was directed by Trent Cox, a theater education major at WSU. According to Cox, there were several difficulties that could go along with holding the title of student director.

“It’s difficult kind of drawing that line between ‘Now I’m director, and now I’m your friend,’” Cox said. “But I feel like there wasn’t any issues with that or anything. I wouldn’t say just as a student director, but as a director in general, just the material is difficult. It’s a 75-year-old play, and just relating it to nowadays is a great challenge.”

The Cradle Will Rock was written by Marc Blitzstein and was originally part of the Federal Theater Project in the 1930s, a program used to put theaters back to work during the Great Depression. However, the program had some past problems with censorship, and shortly before it was about to open, the show was shut down.

“The cast and director (Orson Welles) gathered the opening night audience, the cast and one piano, and walked 21 blocks to a new theater, and performers were told they were going to be arrested if they performed the show on stage because of ‘political overtones,’” Cox said.

He said that Marc Blitztein just got up and started performing the show’s music by piano, and one by one the cast members got up from the audience and sang their parts, performing the entire opening show within the audience.

“I just go to thinking what a great experience that would be as an audience member, as a performer, as just someone in the theater at that time; so I wanted to put that into nowadays and relate that to now,” Cox said.

The in-audience feel of the performance may have been the live piano performance of all the show’s music by music director Rick Rea, and even having the cast perform its own side effects off-stage while the show continued.

The show is about an average American town in the 1930s called Steeltown, USA, which is being rocked by the efforts of an average worker, Larry Foreman, to form a laborers’ union. This doesn’t go over well with greedy steel tycoon, Mr. Mister, as he’s gone out of his way to own the entire town from the preachers to the press in order to make sure this very thing doesn’t happen.

Foreman is arrested giving a public speech about the union along with a group of Mister’s various henchman called the Liberty Committee who were sent to break up the speech and are awaiting Mr. Mister to bail them out for their loyalty. Each of their stories are told of how they sold their souls for Mr. Mister’s money, and in the end it is left up to the people to decide whether the union or a corporate agenda will succeed.

“Mr. Mister, who’s like the government, he owns everything, he pays everyone off to say what he thinks is good to help him personally,” said Addison Welch, the graduating theater performance student who played Larry Foreman. “But we need to fight for what we know is true and what we know is right.”

Welch believes that the show deals with some of the issues faced in today’s politics, and even though they aren’t exact, he still finds them to be applicable.

“I’ve had to really be honest and truthful and pull from what I know is true from the situations happening in our media right now, our life right now, and apply to this character in the thirties,” Welch said.

The show closed last Saturday, but AAT is opened for all students to join if anyone has  interest in these opportunities for the upcoming theater season.

“I think the central theme is talking about those weaker people, the people that weren’t part of the richer class,” Ross said. “This theme is about those people that got tired of being suppressed. They got tired of being pushed down, and they were able to build up into these unions and help to support what America is today and the rights that we have.”

the original article can be found here.

By Ben Fulton

The Salt Lake Tribune

First Published Mar 14 2012 03:04 pm • Last Updated Mar 14 2012 03:04 pm

Similar to Emile Zola’s Germinal, John Sayles’ "Matewan" and Elia Kazan’s "On the Waterfront," "The Cradle Will Rock" is a classic of working-class drama and literature. A classic, except for the fact that some people still know nothing about it.

Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 story of Larry Foreman’s attempts to unionize workers in "Steeltown, USA" in opposition to Mr. Mister sounds almost cartoonish in its outline, but impressed Orson Welles so much that he directed it as part of the Federal Theatre Project’s series of works that began as a program of the Works Progress Administration to employ unemployed artists, actors and theater writers during the Depression. The WPA, in turn, was so alarmed by unabashed political message behind Blitzstein’s drama that they tried to shut it down. Weber State University’s department of performing arts has selected "The Cradle Will Rock" both for its superlative qualities that stand alone, matched with its current relevance to the Occupy movement.

Trent Cox, director of this production, stated in press materials that the hand of German dramatist Bertolt Brecht guided his hand. "Ninety percent of the show is either sung or has musical underscoring—a great challenge," Cox notes.

‘The Cradle Will Rock’
When » March 23-31, 7:30 p.m. with 2 p.m. matinee March 31.
Where » Eccles Theater at Val A. Browning Center for the Arts, Weber State University, 3848 Harrison Blvd, Ogden
Tickets » $8-$11. Call 1-800-WSU-TIKS or visit www.weberstatetickets.com for more information. 

Original Article can be found here.

Accusations of witchcraft and McCarthyism may be relics of the past, but fear is still a factor in this post-9/11 world.

The power of fear is one of the driving forces in Arthur Miller's award-winning play "The Crucible," opening March 7 at the Grand Theatre on the Salt Lake Community College campus.

The play, which won the 1953 Tony award for best play, takes place during the Puritan era and dramatizes the hysteria and frenzy surrounding the Salem witch trials. Miller famously wrote the play as an allegory of the McCarthyism of the 1950s.

"It's the idea of what-does-fear-do-to-us," said Ogden native and actor Tyson Richard Baker, who is playing the Rev. John Hale in the production. "At what point do we draw the line, where we're starting to suspect our neighbors and suspect people that we've known all of our lives? What do we do in those situations?"

Hale is a well-respected minister with a reputation as an expert on witchcraft, Baker explained. He comes to Salem to lend his expertise when a young girl is unable to move in her bed and the villagers suspect witchcraft.

"The town kind of looks to him as the go-to guy to try to fix their problem," Baker said. "He's someone the audience can follow and empathize with really easy, because he is on the same journey of being introduced to this madness of the girls claiming that everybody's a witch."

The girl and a group of her friends are making the accusations because they are trying to hide a secret about themselves. As the frenzy escalates, the Salem witch trials begin and, ultimately, some of the townspeople are found guilty and executed.

Hale is largely responsible for whipping up the furor in the town and pushing for the trials.

Director Mark Fossen and the actors are trying to convey to audiences how real the fear of witchcraft was during the Puritan era and how that affected their behavior.

"Everything that he has ever known as a preacher, and as one who has studied the signs of witchcraft, these signs of witchcraft are pointing to 'yes,' and it's freaking him out," Baker said.

However, Hale begins to realize his folly and later struggles to persuade the accused "witches" to lie by confessing so they can live, rather than tell the truth and die.

"He sees that there is something innately good about the people who are being convicted," Baker said. "It is an inner torment for him."

A student of the play

Baker, who lives in Liberty, is working on a theater arts degree at Weber State University. Audiences will recognize the actor from recent roles as an apostle in "Jesus Christ Superstar" in Park City, Friar Laurence in "Romeo and Juliet" at WSU, and the summer season of the Old Lyric Repertory Theater Company in Logan.

A Baker not only in name but also by present occupation at the Great Harvest Bread Company on Historic 25th Street in Ogden, Baker is hoping to someday work as a full-time actor.

"I work in the early mornings so I can do theater at night, and hopefully will one day will be able to just act," he said.

Baker has studied "The Crucible" throughout the course of his education and was originally drawn to the role of John Proctor, the protagonist of the play who is accused of witchcraft and eventually faces the gallows.

But Baker said he has enjoyed fleshing out the part of the conflicted reverend.

One of his favorite lines comes in the final act as Hale tries to atone for his actions.

"Life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it," Hale says in the play.

Like his character, Baker came to the role with "newbie eyes" and has dived into the play along with the rest of the cast of 19, which includes Cassandra Stokes-Wylie as Elizabeth Proctor, David Hanson as John Proctor, Sahara Hayes as Abigail Williams and Max Robinson as Judge Danforth.

Other Utah favorites in the cast include Ron Frederickson, Richard Scharine, Stephen Williams, Toni Byrd, Barb Smith and Jon McBride.

"Everyone else in the show has really brought their A game, and I felt that from the get-go," Baker said. "People may have preconceived notions about what 'The Crucible' is, but they will find something entirely new with this one because everyone in the cast is very, very talented, and I'm really excited to be able to see how that comes across with the audience."

Related reading

In addition to the show, the Grand Theatre presents a free lecture by Joseph McCarthy scholar David Oshinsky, who discusses his 1983 book "A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy" and how it relates to the theater's production of "The Crucible."

Ochinsky will be speaking at noon March 7 in the Oak Room at the Salt Lake Community College Taylorsville/Redwood Campus, 4600 S. Redwood Road, Salt Lake City.

Prior to Wednesday's opening performance, Ochinsky will continue the conversation at 6 p.m. on the Grand Theatre stage in a question-and-answer session moderated by two SLCC faculty members.

The discussion will focus on Oshinsky's insight about the McCarthy era and how it influenced Miller and other artists of the time.

The events with Oshinsky are free and open to the public. 

When Tyler Hess and Robbie Speelman started the Drumline Club at Weber State University six years ago, they never dreamed that by 2012 the group that began as the local “whipping boy” would be ranked No. 1 in the nation.

However, that’s exactly what happened at the WGI Regional Championship in Corona, Calif., last Saturday, where the indoor percussion group swept first place with a score of 88.8 out of 100, currently the highest score in the nation.

This is the first year that the WSU’s 31-member ensemble has qualified to compete in the Championship. The club joined 23 other groups competing before a panel of judges for the chance to go to the World Championships next year.

The group performed its six and a half minute show several times throughout the competition. At the end of the night, the ensemble was stunned to see that its final score was five points higher than the second-place score and four points higher than last year’s champion.

“When we first got here, I felt like maybe we’ll do okay,” Speelman said. “I was pretty nervous because I’d never been to a show like this. It was the biggest show I’d ever seen, and I’ve been doing this for a long time. We saw some of the other drum lines, and they seemed to be doing really well. After our final performance, I felt like it wasn’t as good as we could’ve made it, and then I heard the score, and I was really, really taken aback. I had no idea we were going to do that well especially for our first time ever being in a regional.”

The victory on Saturday has been a long time coming, Hess said, and is the result of dedicated staff and performers and a rigorous training regimen.  All 31 members of the team are required to do at least 30 minutes of cardio exercise every day in addition to regular rehearsals for five hours every Friday and all day every Saturday.

“It takes a lot of endurance,” Hess said, “and getting 31 people to push themselves to the limits in order to win, that was a challenge.  But it was absolutely worth it.”

The group’s show “Slow Me Down” portrayed how fast-paced life is and the need to slow down. It was a perfect fit for the ensemble, Hess said.

“We’ve been kinda pushing the ensemble for 3-4 years to get better every year and things were just getting so serious that when we saw this show about taking a minute to look around and breathe it seemed to fit our group perfectly.  That was an attitude that we decided we wanted to embrace and give to our performers.  So in our show you’ll see us perform and do visual and musical things that portray the ensemble slowing down.  Giving the impression of stopping to look around at life and take things in.”

It was this somewhat unconventional show, focused on conveying that theme of slowing down with quality and precision, that gave the WSU Drumline the edge it needed on Saturday, according to Hess.

Hess also expressed gratitude for the support of the faculty and student body. He hopes to increase awareness of the club among students.

“The faculty support is completely off the charts,” Hess said. “I’ve never seen so much support for the arts as I have at Weber State University.  From the students, we get support when students know about us, but the group is so new that I don’t think students know we’re there or what we’re doing, but we do get quite a lot of support when people know about it.”

Students will have the chance to see the drumline performing “Slow Me Down” on April 14 when WSU will host the Intermountain Percussion Championships. The club will compete in the World Championships in Dayton, Ohio, next year.

More information can be found on the club’s website at www.weberstatedrumline.org

Original story found here

By Kathy Adams

Special to The Tribune

First published Feb 28 2012 10:08PM
Updated 1 hour ago Updated Feb 29, 2012 11:51AM

Wim Wenders’ film “Pina” appears to have caught the attention of more than just dance fans. The movie’s Oscar nomination for best feature-length documentary came at a time when artists have been talking about creating and viewing dance for screens of various types. “Pina” seems to be part of a movement to make dance more accessible, while changing perceptions about the art form.

Certainly the 3-D technological wizardry of “Pina” is part of the intrigue. On the film’s website and in various interviews, Wenders has stated that using 3-D was the only reason he and Pina Bausch, the choreographer and subject, agreed to begin filming after 20 years of discussing the project.

Yet beyond technology, it’s Wenders’ judicious editing of an esoteric art form that might be the shot in the arm needed to attract new audiences to dance — without compromising artistic integrity. Wenders’ expertise as a cinematographer infuses visual richness into the work through context, point of view, and locations. The film works to capture the texture and emotion of the perishable art of choreography, but Wenders chose not to provide biographical depth or background on Bausch’s work. Instead, filmgoers are required to search out the choreographer and company backstory on their own.

“Pina” has sparked conversations about seminal dance films created for the big screen, such as “West Side Story,” released last year in a 50th-anniversary edition, but in contemporary culture those films represent just the tip of the iceberg. One example is the variety of amateur dance videos posted on YouTube, which range from fun to bizarre, yet don’t seem to account for taste or quality.

Digital distribution » That has led to the launch of websites such as TenduTV, which take the idea of distributing dance films seriously. The site offers profiles and interviews with world-renown dancers and choreographers, a blog, and informed descriptions of work, all intended to guide visitors to online rental or sales of its dance films through iTunes, Amazon and Hulu.

“We want to give people an experience where they can enjoy dance from all over the world that is worth their money,” said TenduTV founder and general manager Marc Kirschner in a phone interview. “We want to deliver it in beautiful high definition video with 5.1 surround audio.”

Kirschner praised the artistic work of Ellen Bromberg, a University of Utah dance and technology professor, as well as what he termed the “phenomenal program she has developed.” Bromberg’s compelling documentary on dancer/choreographer Molissa Fenley, “The re-staging of ‘State of Darkness’?” can be found on Hulu, via TenduTV. And Bromberg’s newest documentary on Judson Church dance artist Deborah Hay, “Deborah Hay, not as Deborah Hay” can be accessed through dance-tech.tv.

“What Mark [Kirschner] is doing by making dance and dance film more accessible globally is really important and it comes at a really good time,” Bromberg said. “The success of ‘Pina,’ casts new focus on dance and dance on film.”

Filming dance, in Salt Lake City » That brings us to the local choreographers and filmmakers who are a part of a national Dances Made to Order project, which Bromberg describes as part of an effort to “create a frame around dance and dance filmmaking and tie the country together.”

Dances Made to Order, launched in April 2011 by Los Angeles choreographer Kingsley Irons and filmmaker Bryan Koch, is a monthly, curated online series featuring 5-minute videos of dances created in just two weeks from ideas suggested by subscribers. The founders have extended the effort to 11 cities around the country. Ashley Anderson, a local dance advocate and founder of the loveDANCEmore website, was invited to curate the Salt Lake City edition. Anderson picked the artists, but subscribers will vote on their inspirations. (Themes will be posted March 7, and films will be created from March 16-April 1. .)

To Anderson, an important element of the effort is that artists are paid a percentage of subscription fees, in contrast to film festivals where artists pay a fee to submit work. “Since the U. has such a great screen dance program, I was able to pair and coordinate choreographers with filmmakers,” Anderson said. “The project is also a response to the uncurated dance videos that are all over the Internet. DMTO gives people an opportunity to see what experimental choreographers all over the country are thinking about and doing.”

How it works » The filmmakers give Irons a list of inspirational creative topics, and subscribers to dancesmadetoorder.com vote for their favorites. The top three themes must be used in each dance, no matter how wacky a combination. For example, three subjects for a recent series of Los Angeles films were: 1. Sugary/salty; 2. A film within a film; 3. Would you be better off if you hadn’t...?

Kirschner said the need for DMTO “extends out of the fact that in other countries the opportunities for dance film artists is much greater than in the U.S. because television networks have budgets which include commissioning dance.”

Instead, for American dancers, new media has created a virtual town hall for artists around the globe.

“When I came here 11 years ago, most students didn’t have email,” Bromberg said. “Now there are so many opportunities for students to think about the field and get their work out. They can create and put their own dance films up online.”

 Josie Patterson-Halford » Earned a bachelor’s degree in dance from Weber State University. Her work has been featured at the American College Dance Festival, and in 2010 she served as a regional coordinator. She has performed with inFluxdance Company, and her solo choreography has been featured throughout the state of Utah.

Scott C. Halford » Weber State University graduate with a degree in integrated studies. While attending school, he founded the multimedia production company Foursite Studios, and later organized the Foursite Film Festival. Halford has made more than 60 short films. 

WSU music majors present at St. George NAfME Convention

By Kory Wood February 4, 2012.

WSU Chamber Choirs rehearse for their presentation in St. George.

Members of Weber State University’s Performing Arts Department traveled down to St. George over the weekend to attend, perform and present at the National Association for Music Education’s Utah conference.

The NAfME conference is a chance for WSU music students to attend innovative and informative workshops with other music educators and university students from around the state. Held at the Dixie Center, the conference included workshops from both choral and instrumental presenters.

“We saw great numbers and presentations from tons of local teachers,” said Dustin Shuler, a member of the WSU choirs and prospective music teacher. “We saw the boys’ choir from Maple Mountain High School, directed by Cory Mendenhall. He puts them together at lunch time and works on tone and how to keep it going through the changing male voice. It was absolutely incredible . . . He had the tone sounding like BYU Men’s Chorus.”

Mark Henderson, director of the WSU choirs, presented a special workshop for choir directors called Choir Formations: What Works and Why? Designed to demonstrate the benefits and drawbacks of different on-stage formations for performances and rehearsals, the session included a demonstration by Henderson and a group of WSU Chamber Choir members.

“One of the main points of the presentation was simply that the act of spreading the choir out will improve the sound,” Shuler said. “We spread all across the risers and sang, then bunched together in the middle, and the difference was huge.”

Henderson then pulled several music teachers from the audience and had them perform together in different formations. Using “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need,” a popular arrangement from Mac Wilberg, director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Henderson helped demonstrate why rehearsal and performance formation affect sound.

Coulter Neal, a music education major at WSU and choir member, helped in the demonstration.

“It went really well,” Neal said. “He had about 16 different teachers go up there and did the same process with them to show the difference between the sound they’d made. A lot of choirs will just get up there and bunch together, and the sound isn’t as good.”

The Weber State Wind Ensemble was one of the featured performing groups at the convention. Under the direction of Thomas Root, the group has performed in New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, as well as traveling performance tours to Taiwan and Germany.

Composed primarily of woodwind instruments like clarinets, flutes and saxophones, the WSU Wind Ensemble gives students from all majors a chance to audition for a quality group.

“The Wind Ensemble did great,” Neal said. “They represented our school well.”

Donald Keipp, who directs the WSU Jazz Ensemble, performed with the WSU Wind Ensemble on the marimba.

“The audience really loved Dr. Keipp,” Neal said. “That was really neat to watch.”

Article found here