Peter Michalove Memorial Concert

Champaign-Urbana composer Peter Michalove intended the concert he arranged for Monday, February 3rd to be his final composition recital, but his terminal illness had other ideas. It is now a memorial concert. My involvement in the concert came as one of the kindest gestures imaginable from a fellow composer.

I have another composition recital at Indi Go on Feb. 3. It will be a little shorter than I had hoped, but it will still be an evening-full of my music. This will be my final composition recital.

But then I saw you're planning a clarinet and viola piece. Lydia is playing in a couple of pieces of mine for my recital. But I said I'd write something just for her. It would have been my last work, and I was going to call it Farewell for Lydia. But Lydia had other ideas (as she always does). She wanted something for viola and clarinet. I said, great! That's an excellent combination.

But once I finished another piece for the recital, I was unable to write any more. I called Lydia, and I said there was no one I less wanted to say this to, but I couldn't give her the piece I had promised her. So I may be making some assumptions here, but now it seems you're going to write the piece for her that I can't.

Do it with all the fondness I have for her.

Peter

The concert has been moved to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, 1800 Oak Street, Suite 108, Champaign, Illinois (where Peter taught), and will begin at 7:30. Several new pieces by Peter (and the piece I wrote for him) will be played trumpet players Aaron Romm and Jeremy McBain, violist Lydia Tang (the Lydia mentioned above), clarinetist Vince Gilbert, Oboist John Dee, violinists Anne Heiles and Aaron Jacobs, cellist Samuel Araya, pianist Tatiana Shustova, soprano Cristin Colvin, and double bass player Margaret Briskin.