‘Juilliard Joins Texas State’ features performers, poet, world premiere
Dr. Wayne Oquin during rehearsal at Texas State
By Billi London-Gray
The best collaborations continue for years. “Juilliard Joins Texas State” is no exception. The annual spring event, now in its fifth year, is a joint effort by the best performers from Texas State University and New York’s renowned Juilliard School.
This year’s performance, titled Sustaining the Moment: Reflections of Art and Nature, will be an artistic response, through dance, drama and music, to the Texas State Common Experience theme of sustainability. Dr. Wayne Oquin, a Texas State Honors grad and Distinguished Alumnus and an award-winning composer, pianist and Juilliard faculty member, will direct the performance.
Eighteen artists from Juilliard, including students and alumni, and 11 Texas State music students will perform the work, which is structured as a continuous 90-minute piece.
“This is not a typical concert,” Oquin says in a preview of the event. “The entire performance is connected with everything flowing together. A monologue blends seamlessly into the music, then into a scene, which will in turn introduce music with dance, and so forth. The sets change quickly in the dark. The performers do not acknowledge any applause until the very end … The result is that the different media affect each other.”
Musically, Sustaining the Moment will feature Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata, Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite, Jacob Druckman’s Reflections on the Nature of Water, Oquin’s Watersong, and the world premiere of Oquin’s Flute Concerto, commissioned specifically for the event.
Janisse Ray
A reading from Janisse Ray’s award-winning book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, also will be among the work featured in the performance.
“Sustainability is the work of our time,” Ray says. “The most important call to action is simply to get engaged in the world. Look around at its needs and start today making your corner of it a better place … we have to fall in love with our places.”
“Juilliard Joins Texas State” will be held on campus in Evans Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 10. Doors open at 7 p.m. The audience will be limited to the first 935 attendees, the full seating capacity of Evans Auditorium. No one will be seated after the concert has begun.
For further information about this Common Experience event, contact the University Honors Program at 512.245.2266, the University Seminar program at 512.245.7952, or the Common Experience website.
Related events include:
- Janisse Ray reading, “Altar Call for True Believers: Being the Change We Imagine”, at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 8, UCM-Wesley, 510 N. Guadalupe, San Marcos
- Janisse Ray reading and discussion, “Creating a Sense of Place”, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 9, San Marcos Public Library, 625 E. Hopkins St., San Marcos
- Reception for Dr. Wayne Oquin, Juilliard performers and poet Janisse Ray from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, March 10, on campus in the Honors Coffee Forum, Lampasas 407
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