UAA Trombone Trio to Premiere Three Works Friday

This coming Friday evening at 7:30 p.m, at the UAA Fine Arts Building recital hall, the University of Alaska Trombone Trio will present four works in their first Alaska performances. Three of these will be world premieres, one an Alaska debut.

Dr. George Belden, Dr. Christopher Sweeney and Prof. Philip Munger will perform six works. Two works will also be performed by some of Dr. Sweeney's UAA students.

Perhaps the most exciting event will be the premiere of Serbian composer Ivan Jevtic's Sonata for Alto, Tenor and Bass Trombones. Prof. Jevtic, who teaches in Belgrade and Paris, is excited about the performance, saying, "I am glad my composition is performed far way, in the far north!"

Dr. Belden and Prof. Munger will perform from Variations on an Aboriginal Tune, a work for two trombones Munger composed in 1964, when he was sixteen.

The trio will present the premiere of Munger's Shards III, for bugle, two trombones, electronics and recorded electronic sound. The work was written to honor and commemorate America's 4,000-plus Iraqi War dead. It was just last year, that Munger presented Shards II, commemorating 3,000 American Armed Forces deaths in that awful, misguided war. Shards I, honoring our first thousand fatalities in that war, premiered at UAA in November, 2004.

Munger, a Vietnam War-era U.S. Army veteran, is a member of Bugles Across America, an organization that plays "taps" at memorial and dedicatory services and ceremonies across the country.

The trio will also present the premiere of Dr. Belden's transcription of Henry Cowell's Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 12, from 1957. Originally scored for a trio of French horns, Dr. Belden has rewritten them for trombone trio.

Tickets will be available at the UAA Fine Arts Building before the concert. Parking is free.