Music Wall Duo To Perform Tonight At Illinois College

By Benjamin Cox on November 20, 2021 at 11:30am

The Jacksonville area will have the chance to hear the premiere of a new musical piece by a noted local composer.

Tim Kramer, professor emeritus of the School of Music at Illinois College, will have a flute and piano piece debuted on Saturday at Rammelkamp Chapel as a part of the college’s Fine Art Series.

Kramer says the Music Wall Duo of Pei-I Wang on piano and Abigail Walsh on flute will bring life to a pandemic inspired piece he wrote in the middle of last Spring: “We were about midway through the pandemic. It was sort of maybe May or something like that…and I said I think I’m going to write a piece that uses flute and piano and has several small pieces. The way it ended up was basically in 8 movements, and each one of these movements represent kind of an emotional state that we have probably all felt over the pandemic, certain kinds of moods and feelings. I’m calling them stelae – these memorial stone monuments, and these are short movements.”

Walsh says as a performer, she enjoys getting into the minds of the composers of the pieces that she performs. She says with Kramer’s piece, she has a special connection because she can interact with him and his ideas in real time: “Now, I have this connection with these living composers that are sort of experiencing this modern world at the same time, and they might be inspired by some of the things that composers have always been inspired by, but there is sort of this extra-emotional connection. I just look at my flute as this sort of extension of my voice. In the same way I can talk to someone a certain way and then say the same things softly, I look at [the flute] as a sort of tool that sort of doesn’t have any limits. It’s kind of like trying to just process that and create that emotion [of the piece]. It’s just really fun to do that and be able to speak with the composers, as well, and be able to get that message out.”

The program will also feature music from other living composers that are a part of the Composers Alliance of San Antonio, a group that Kramer helped to found in 1999.

The music starts at 7:30PM at Rammelkamp Chapel on Illinois College’s campus. Individual tickets are $15 for adults. Students and children are admitted free. The concert will also be livestreamed. For more information, visit ic.edu/fas.