This concert will premiere the Reformation Cantata, composed in honor of the Reformation Commemoration by four Luther College alumni and four current students. The program will also include a new work for concert band, jointly commissioned by a consortium of Lutheran colleges. Ensembles involved include the Concert Band, Collegiate Chorale, and Cathedral Choir. Open to the public with no charge for admission.
The “Reformation Cantata” is a new multi-movement work in the Lutheran liturgical tradition, created in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. With individual movements composed by four Luther College alumni and four current Luther students, the cantata includes music for choir, soloists, actors, concert band, and bluegrass trio.
The work will be premiered on October 31 at 7:30 p.m. in the Center for Faith and Life on the Luther College campus. A pre-concert conversation with the composers will be offered at 6:30 pm that evening in the choir room of the Jenson-Noble Hall of Music. Both events are free and open to the public.
The cantata is anchored by four choral movements, composed by Luther alums Daniel Kallman (’78), Sky Macklay (’10), Mark Petering (’95), and Daniel G. Raney (’92). Four instrumental interludes are interspersed throughout the work, composed by Luther students Pablo Gomez-Estévez (‘18), John Kuntz (’19), Caleb Linville (’19) and Hunter Prueger (’18).
Performers include Collegiate Chorale (Jennaya Robison, ’16, conductor), Cathedral Choir (Mark Potvin, ’01, conductor), and Concert Band (Joan de Albuquerque, conductor). Soloists include Beth Ray Westlund (’89), mezzo-soprano; Nori Hadley (’97), fiddle; John Goodin, mandolin; and Andrea Beckendorf (’93), double bass. Additionally, David Judisch, emeritus professor of music, will appear as an actor in one of the movements.
The project was initiated by Luther’s Composer-in-Residence, Brooke Joyce, with funding provided by the Marilyn Roverud Endowed Fellowship for Lutheran Studies.
The premiere of the Reformation Cantata is part of “The Reformation of Everything” Symposium at Luther College on October 31.
Pablo Gómez-Estévez is a student composer from the Dominican Republic. At Luther College, he is noted for his academic and artistic achievements. His compositions have been performed at Luther College, Berklee College of Music, Boston Conservatory, and in the Dominican Republic. In 2016, he received the Presser Scholar Award, an award that celebrates his dedication to excellence both as musician and scholar. Pablo is a member of the prestigious honor societies Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Kappa Lambda.
Daniel Kallman is grateful for the musical mentorship he received from so many Luther grads during his pre-college years, for all six of the Dorian summer camps and four winter festivals he attended, and for the four most musically fulfilling years of his life at Luther College in the 1970s. He works as a full-time composer in a variety of styles and mediums, primarily writing for youth, school, college, church and community ensembles.
John Kuntz is a Junior music composition major and piano student. Most notably, he was featured as a showcase artist in MPR’s Minnesota Varsity Competition. During his time at Luther, John has participated in many compositional projects such as performing in composition workshops, presenting original electro-acoustic music in both performance and sound installation, and collaborating with students on various orchestration projects. John hopes to attend graduate school in either composition or music therapy.
Having grown up in a musical family, Caleb Linville’s natural inclination has always been towards composition. At the age of seven, he started taking piano lessons, and thus, started learning the complex language which is music. Throughout his childhood, Caleb continued to compose little songs and notate them on paper. At the age of twelve, he decided that he “wanted to become a composer when he grew up.” He is currently a junior at Luther College and studies music composition with Brooke Joyce.
Sky Macklay is a composer, oboist, and installation artist originally from Minnesota and currently pursuing her DMA at Columbia University. Her recent projects include an opera set in a uterus, two interactive installations of harmonica-playing inflatable sculptures, and a reed quintet commissioned by Chamber Music America. Her orchestra piece Dissolving Bands won the Leo Kaplan award from ASCAP and her string quartet Many Many Cadences, recorded on Spektral Quartet’s Grammy-nominated album, also received an ASCAP award.
Mark Petering's music is available on iTunes and Google Play and has been recorded by Frank Almond (owner of the famous stolen/recovered Stradivarius); Jason DePue of the Philadelphia Orchestra; the Czech National Symphony; and the Colburn Orchestra. His work Train and Tower was named a Top 10 orchestral composition evoking railways in the October 2008 edition of Gramophone Magazine in the UK by preeminent London critic Jeremy Nicholas. Petering is listed at #8 with Hector Berlioz at #9. His sheet music is available at imslp.org (please search "Mark Petering").
Hunter Prueger is a senior music composition student at Luther College. Under the tutelage of Brooke Joyce, he has composed works for acclaimed ensembles such as Sō Percussion and the Luther College Concert Band. In 2016 Hunter received a grant to create and score the indie game Aila. He also studied with Tom Lopez and Stefano Sacher at the International Music Festival of the Adriatic in the summer of 2017.
Daniel G. Raney is a Jack-of-All-Trades, Master-of-None. He grew up on a farm in Minnesota. He holds a B.A. from Luther College, and a Master of Music in Composition from Florida State University. He currently divides his attention between music composition, arranging, copying, and various remodeling and skilled handyman jobs. His ensemble music has been performed by Celebration Iowa Singers and Jazz Band, the Luther College Concert Band, and the Luther College Jazz Orchestra. His performance activities include several bands, brass quintets, and a Civil War era ensemble.