Works by composer Libby Larsen to be featured in Oct. 28 Syracuse Symposium/Setnor Tuesday Concert Series event

Works by composer Libby Larsen to be featured in Oct. 28 Syracuse Symposium/Setnor Tuesday Concert Series eventOctober 24, 2003Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

The Syracuse Symposium will embark on a musical journey on Oct. 28 with a performance of “A Woman’s Journey: Sonnets from the Portuguese” featuring soprano Eileen Strempel and the Syracuse University Orchestra conducted by James Tapia. The concert, part of the Setnor Tuesday Concert Series, begins at 8 p.m. in Setnor Auditorium and is free and open to the public. Visitor parking is free and is available in Irving garage.

The concert will feature Sonnets from the Portuguese by composer Libby Larsen, as well as other selected works. “Sonnets,” a set of songs about mature love and a woman’s decision to uproot her life and enter into a partnership with another person, is included on “love lies bleeding,” a recent CD collaboration between Strempel, Larsen and Canadian pianist Sylvie Beaudette. The CD will be available for purchase following the performance.

Strempel, an assistant professor in the Department of Fine Arts in The College of Arts and Sciences and assistant to the dean in The College of Visual and Performing Arts, has been hailed as “a magnificent coloratura” and “a lyrical soprano” by the Associated Press. She has performed in venues around the world and is the recipient of numerous prestigious prizes and awards. Her first recorded collaboration with Beaudette, “With All My Soul,” was released in March 2000 and features previously unrecorded works by Marie de Grandval along with melodies by Lili Boulanger and Pauline Viardot-Garcia.

The Syracuse Symposium, presented for the University by The College of Arts and Sciences, is an annual intellectual festival celebrating interdisciplinary thinking, imagining and creating. The 2003 theme is “Journeys.”