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Spring songs

Dawn Lenore Sonntag will be guest composers for the New Music Society’s annual spring concerts.

Sonntag – a composer, singer, pianist and conductor – is an assistant professor of music at Hiram College and a member of the Cleveland Composers Guild. Her works encompass vocal, choral, orchestral, dance and film music and have been performed across the U.S. and Europe. Her first opera, “Verlorene Heimat,” will premiere at Hiram College this April. Upcoming commissions include a work for Chinese instruments and chorus for the Orchid Ensemble, a Vancouver-based Chinese music trio, and an opera in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Augsburg College (St. Paul, Minn.).

The recitals will focus on Sonntag’s chamber music for voice and instruments and will demonstrate her extensive experience in setting English texts and those translated from Swedish. She will also perform a collection of her settings of poets Christina Rossetti, Sarah Teasdale, Karin Bye, and Marvin Bell. A version of 19th century American poet Walt Whitman’s “Come Up from the Fields, Father” also will appear.

She will be accompanied by pianist Karen Murphy, flutist/oboist Paul Dreisbach and cellist Stephen Wagner.

Violinists Brendan and Karen Considine will perform “It’s My Turn to Have the Evening Off” by Youngstown composer Richard Zacharias. The title refers to the couple’s busy musical life, which vies for attention with their active upbringing of three children. Zacharias is an avid concertgoer and member of the New Music Guild Inc.

Concerts are scheduled at 12:15 p.m. Wednesday at the Butler Institute of American Art, and 8 p.m. Wednesday at Youngstown State University’s Bliss Recital Hall. Admission for both concerts is free.

For more information, call Dana School of Music at 330-941-3636.

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