HALLOWEEN EVE CONCERT OFFERS HAUNTING GOOD TIME

HATTIESBURG - The second installment of the Camerata Concerts: Faculty Artists Chamber Music Series at The University of Southern Mississippi Oct. 30 promises to be the "scariest" program of the season. To complement a program of haunting chamber music, organizers are encouraging members of the audience to come dressed as their favorite ghosts, ghouls, or other traditional Halloween personalities.

A distinguished panel of School of Music faculty will ably judge Camerata's second annual Halloween costume competition and will award a prize for best costume.

Scary costumes won't be the only creative aspect of the event as there will be beautiful chamber music as well. The program will open with Claude Debussy's Sonata for flute, viola, and harp, featuring guest harpist Rachel Van Voorhees, along with faculty artists Sharon Lebsack on flute and Michael Kimber on viola.

"Debussy's very colorful writing for such a trio could conjure up images of all sorts at this time of year," Kimber, a performer and coordinator for the annual chamber music series, said with a mysterious tone.

Next on the program will be three songs by Rodger Vaughn for the unlikely combination of soprano and tuba, sung and played, respectively, by Dr. Maryann Kyle and Richard Perry. "I'm still trying to figure out how to wear a tuba as my costume," Kyle said.

"The 'low' point of the program will be the Sonata for Viola Four Hands by P. D. Q. Bach, a fictitious son of the more revered but less humorous J. S. Bach," Kimber said. "Imagine two people trying to figure out how to play one viola."

Other faculty artists will join Kimber in this fiendishly challenging work, but their identities will be kept secret until the performance.

Audience members who survive the P. D. Q. Bach sonata will be treated to a performance of Mozart's haunting Quartet in D Minor, K. 417b, performed by violinists Stephen Redfield and Jorge Gonzalez, violist Kimber, and cellist Alexander Russakovsky.

The 7:30 p.m. concert will be held at Marsh Auditorium on the Southern Miss campus. Tickets are $8 general admission or $5 for Southern Miss faculty, staff, and students, senior citizens and children under 12. Call the Southern Miss Ticket Office at (601) 266-5418 or 800-844-8425 for tickets or order online at www.usm.edu/tickets. All proceeds from ticket sales will benefit School of Music scholarship funds.

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