Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 12, 1992 TAG: 9201100273
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jeff DeBell
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
COMPOSER OOZES BACK WITH CHILDREN'S OPERA
Milton Granger, composer, pianist and former member of the faculty at Hollins College, will direct the world premiere of his new children's opera in May at Radford College.The opera is titled "Up From Slime." It is about "the development of personality from protozoa to people, with emphasis on the environment," according to Betty Turner, a member of the music faculty at Radford.
The opera was commissioned by the university's Community Arts School and is supported by grants from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and other sources. It will be performed by children, ages 9-14, who were to have been selected during auditions this weekend.
Granger resigned from Hollins in 1990 to pursue a free-lance career as a pianist, composer and conductor. During his 19 years at the school, he was well-known in the area both as a performer and as the composer of such works as "Pigeons," "This Bright Day" and "O. Henry's Christmas Carol," which was the 1988 holiday musical at Mill Mountain Theatre. He is a former artistic director of Opera Roanoke, too.
Granger now lives in New Jersey, and since leaving the Roanoke area, he has had a one-act opera performed in Baltimore and has written the score for a Florida production of "A Christmas Carol." He recently was musical director for an off-Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Company."
\ Virginia Tech's new Squires Recital Salon, used primarily for quartets and other small ensembles since it opened in September, will be the setting for full chamber-orchestra performances on Jan. 18 and 19.
The Chamber Orchestra of Southwest Virginia will consist of 25 professionals from the ranks of the Roanoke and West Virginia Symphony Orchestras and the music faculty at Tech.
Director James Glazebrook described the group as an ad hoc orchestra assembled solely for the purpose of helping to showcase the acclaimed new hall during its first year.
"This is not a competing orchestra," he said. "I don't want anybody in Roanoke thinking that."
\ "White Money," an award-winning absurdist comedy by Julie Jensen, has been announced as the second and final play in Mill Mountain Theatre's annual Norfolk Southern Festival of New Works.
It will join Lynn Elliott's drama "And We Were Left Darkling," winner of the theater's 1991 new play competition.
The festival opens this weekend in Theatre B.
In addition to the two full productions, there will be script-in-hand staged readings of works-in-progress by five Virginia playwrights. One of them is Mill Mountain's own literary manager, Jo Weinstein. Her play, "Baby Face," was inspired by the plight of children who are born with the AIDS virus.
\ Opera Roanoke's production of "The Barber of Seville" is reviewed in the current issue of Opera News, and officials of the company are delighted to have the national attention.
Those who attended the opera will remember that director Craig Fields moved it from the traditional setting, 17th-century Seville, to New York's Little Italy in 1929. Reviewer Carl Halperin said the innovation worked "for much of the evening - even shedding new light on relationships between characters - until the imagination was put sorely to the test as Rosina and Berta led everyone in the Charleston to close Act II."
Among the performers, Christine Meadows (Rosina) was singled out for singing that was "never less than fluid, stylish and accurate."
\ The tourist trade and how to attract it - that will be the subject when the Virginia Association of Museums holds its Southwest regional meeting in Roanoke Jan. 23 and 24.
Martha Mackey, executive director of the Roanoke Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau, will be among the speakers. Sessions will take place at the Virginia Museum of Transportation and will be open to the public.
The Richmond-based state association has more information at (804) 367-1079.