The Cal Poly Music Department will present a lively evening of traditional and contemporary music in “A Night at the Mission,” its annual chamber concert Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Old Mission Church downtown.
The concert will feature six Cal Poly student ensembles, including the Trombone Choir, Clarinet Ensemble, Chamber Winds, Saxophone Quartet, Brass Choir, and String Quartet.
“I think it’s fun because you get to hear the small ensembles that don’t play in the big concerts,” said Valerie Gong, who plays oboe for the wind ensemble and will perform with the Chamber Winds on Saturday. Gong, an environmental horticulture science senior, has been playing oboe since fifth grade.
The benefit concert, which is now an annual event, started a few years ago as a fundraiser for a single music department event. This year, the Old Mission Church will seat about 500 people for the performance.
“It’s a whole different experience for them as students,” said music professor Bill Johnson of the music department, who coordinated the event. “It just belongs to them.”
Johnson conducts the Cal Poly Wind Orchestra and the Cal Poly Wind Ensemble and has been a faculty member since 1966.
Chamber music is written for a small group of performers, “four, five, six, ten at the most,” said Johnson, and is designed to be played in a small room or “chamber.” For this concert, he said the “key players” from each section have been put into small groups for the best sound possible.
The Chamber Winds ensemble will play a piece called “Old Wine in New Bottles,” written in 1958 by British composer Gordon Jacob. Johnson met Jacob in England in 1981 and chose the lively, and energetic, yet difficult piece for this year’s concert after “it was kind of just sitting around” in his office for a while.
“He was a funny guy,” Johnson said of the late Jacob. “You can hear his humor in it.”
The Chamber Winds, which usually plays as a quintet, will play as a group of ten students this year to accommodate the piece, Johnson said.
Admission to the concert is $8 for students and seniors and $10 for the public. Johnson said he expects a big turnout from the community but also a lot of student support for the event, since it has been advertised with flyers and posters around campus.
The Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa is located at 751 Palm St. in downtown San Luis Obispo. Tickets can be purchased at the Performing Arts Ticket Office, on on its Web site, www.pacslo.org, or at the door the night of the concert.