March 1, 2020 - I am deeply grateful to Mark Volker for conducting the premiere of my R E L I Q U I A E for Chamber Ensemble, with the very talented student musicians of The Belmont New Music Ensemble (BNME) who are constantly increasing both their musicianship and performance accuracy. Volker has long been recognized as a composer whose music has been performed and recorded around the world. From his BNME players he gets not only unexpected precision but genuine musicality. It's hard to keep the irregular movement of my music going, but it does indeed move, and Volker saw to it. The BNME plays at the level you'd expect from highly motivated students, but, really, every soloist (and there are quite a few of them in R E L I Q U I A E ) invests their lines with forethought and care. The sounds of the ensemble are beautiful, and it's on YouTube. How can you resist?
Belmont New Music Ensemble Premieres Reliquiae
ZANE GILLESPIE
After six years as Minister of Music at Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church (UMC) in Holly Springs, MS, I was recently called to continue to work to address public engagement in music participation as Director of Music Ministries at First UMC in Water Valley, MS. I am a Composer, Theorist, and member of both The College Music Society as well as The Poe Studies Association (PSA). I am also an active pianist and vocalist, specializing primarily in church music. My paper entitled ““Mesmeric Revelation”: Art as Hypnosis” has been published by the international, peer-reviewed journal Humanities. In addition, another paper of mine entitled “A Model of Triadic Post-Tonality for a Neoconservative Postmodern String Quartet by Sky Macklay” has been submitted to the peer-reviewed Music Theory journal Perspectives of New Music. At the end of February 2015, I served as Chair for the session entitled “Aesthetics and Philosophy” at The Fourth International PSA Conference in New York City. On June 21, 2014, my Quartet for Alto Saxophone and Strings, a commission from concert saxophonist Walter Hoehn, was performed as part of Concert V of the Eighth Annual Belvedere Chamber Music Festival held at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Memphis, TN. Characteristically neo-romantic (in the original sense of the word), my music earned me the Nancy Van de Vate Award for Composition three times from the University of Mississippi Department of Music. A native of Pontotoc, MS, I hold degrees from the University of Mississippi (BM; MM), and the University of Memphis (DMA) where I was the 2011 recipient of the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music's Smit Composition Award. I live in Memphis, TN.