CONTACT:  Wendy V. Long, Public Relations

                        (413) 685-1003

Cultural councils support commissioned work for Gateway

Huntington – Gateway Vocal Music Director Jerilyn Beauregard is pleased to announce that Dr. Allen Bonde has been commissioned to compose a piece for the high school Chorus, which is scheduled to be performed at the Spring Concert on May 17th. 

The Local Cultural Councils from Montgomery, Huntington, Blandford, Worthington, Chester, Russell and Middlefield all granted funding to support the project.  The piece will focus on the Gateway hilltowns and is entitled “The Dam”.  It will feature the Gateway Chorus and fiddler Leland Martin, with piano accompaniment.

Since 1971, Allen Bonde has been a professor of music at Mount Holyoke College, where he teaches Composition, Music in the American Musical, Beethoven Symphonies and Brahms Chamber Music. Bonde is also an accomplished composer and performer.  He has performed as a pianist at Carnegie Recital Hall, the National Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Severance Chamber Hall.  His compositions have been performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic brass principals, the New England Conservatory of Music Chorus, and Wong Ching-Ping, a famous pipa (short-necked lute) player.

He was born in Manitowac, Wisconsin and began playing piano at age 3.  His life story—from growing up in a home without running water or electricity to becoming a concert pianist—was featured in Reader’s Digest in September 1991.

Over the course of his career, Bonde has received a Festival Casals Scholarship, a Yale Graduate Fellowship, was a fellow at the Saltzburg Seminar in American Studies, and was the first musician-in-residence at the Nanyang Technological University National Institute of Education in Singapore. Bonde is a graduate of the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music and holds the M.M. and D.M.A from the Catholic University of America.

Leland James Martin is a freshman from Blandford and highly accomplished fiddler who performs and competes throughout New England. He has been playing fiddle for 9 ½ years, and studies with Becky Koehler of East Greenbush, New York. When asked what his proudest accomplishment is so far, he answered, “Taking 2nd Place in the Junior Division at a contest in Vermont with fiddlers from all over New England.” He is the son of Mary Elizabeth and Lloyd Martin of Blandford.

In addition to supporting the commissioned choral piece, five of the Local Cultural Councils granted funding for a choreographer for the Show Choir’s annual Cabaret, which is scheduled for Friday, April 6, 2007 in the Gateway Performing Arts Center. Additional funding was granted for the HS Music Department Trip, the Middle School Playwright Program, and for visiting performers for the MS Band.