Fordham’s Voices Up! concerts are held in collaboration with the University’s Poets Out Loud reading and book series, now in its twentieth year. The 2012 concert is notable on several fronts. The young musicians, Madalyn Parnas (violin), Cicily Parnas (cello) (http://www.parnasmusic.com), and Sharon Harms (soprano) (http://sharonharmsvoice.com) are rising stars. The concert features premieres by a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Paul Moravec (http://paulmoravec.com), as well as by David Dzubay (http://pronovamusic.com) and Fordham’s Lawrence Kramer (musicbylawrencekramer.com), both also prizewinning composers. And David Dzubay’s composition, commissioned for this concert, is a setting of three poems from another prizewinner, Julie Choffel, whose The Hello Delay, published by Fordham University Press, is a 2012 winner of the Poets Out Loud book competition. Julie Choffel will be on hand to read the poems that David Dzubay has set in his song cycle For a While.

This year’s concert is also intended to celebrate the 2011 appointment of Lawrence Kramer, the series’ founder and director, to the position of Distinguished Professor at Fordham.

The music on the program explores the unusual combination of voice and solo strings. As well as the new compositions, it includes a modern classic in this genre, part 4 of Gyorgy Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments. The compositions by Paul Moravec (an instrumental duo), David Dzubay, and Lawrence Kramer were all written for the evening’s performers.

Saturday April 28, 7:30 pm
Admission is free.

Madalyn Parnas, Violin; Cicely Parnas, Cello; Sharon Harms, Soprano
With Julie Choffel reading from her prizewinning The Hello Delay

Paul Moravec, Parnas Duo (premiere)
David Dzubay, For a While (poems by Julie Choffel; premiere)
Gyorgy Kurtag, Kafka Fragments, Part 4
Lawrence Kramer, Another Time (premiere)

Fordham University—Lincoln Center
NW Corner 60th St. and Columbus Ave., 12th Floor Lounge