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Symphony No. 2: A New Work by Dr. Joseph Rivers of the TU Department of Music

By Rich Fisher

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kwgs/local-kwgs-991827.mp3

Tulsa, OK – On today's program we speak with Dr. Joseph Rivers, the Feagin Professor of Music here at TU. On Saturday night of this week (the 5th), at 8pm, at the Van Trease Auditorium on Tulsa Community College's Southeast Campus, a newly created orchestral work by Dr. Rivers will have its premiere. Symphony No. 2 --- subtitled "Oklahoma Peoples in Trial and Triumph" --- will be performed by TCC's Signature Symphony alongside the Signature Chorale and the Cherokee National Youth Choir. It's a vast, multifaceted work that will feature not just music but also narration and visual media. Dr. Rivers, who's had ample experience in scoring for films (both locally and in Hollywood), tells us that each of the four movements in his new symphony aims to tell a story from the pages of Oklahoma history --- and thus we find musical passages depicting the European American pioneers and the Land Run, the heyday of Oklahoma's great oil men, the Dust Bowl, the Cherokee Trail of Tears, and the Tulsa Race Riot. (For more information on this piece, and on its debut on November 5th, please go to http://www.utulsa.edu/academics/colleges/Henry-Kendall-College-of-Arts-and-Sciences/Departments-and-Schools/School-of-Music/News-Events-and-Publications/Events-Calendar/2011/November/JosephRiversSymphonyNo2Premiere.aspx.) Also, on this final day of October, our commentator Jeff Martin offers an engagingly scary (and true!) Halloween story.