Our Artistic Director, Tony Thornton, recently completed his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Choral Conducting and Historical Musicology at The University of Arizona School of Music. As part of the doctoral program, Tony was required to present four recitals. His final recital, the doctoral lecture recital, was performed on the campus of California State University, Los Angeles on January 26. LACA was thrilled to support our conductor as the recital chorus for this event.
The lecture recital was entitled The Influence of Poetry Upon James Mulholland's Compositional Process and Musical Style. In his lecture, Tony discussed five of Mulholland's choral works, focusing on the composer's use of scansion (measurement of metrical patterns in each line of poetry), vocalization, imagery, and Leitmotif to express the text. LACA performed each work following Tony's discussion. The choral works included Heart, we will forget him! (Emily Dickinson), Fulfillment (Anonymous), The Wild Honeysuckle (Philip Freneau), What lips my lips have kissed (Edna St. Vincent Millay), and If love should count you worthy (attributed to Sidney Royse Lysaght).