Hollybush Summit at Rowan Commemoration

Tenor Jon Robert Cart, Dean of the College of Fine & Performing Arts at Rowan University, offers a recital, “Still Falls the Rain,” on Wednesday, February 20, 2008 at 8 pm in Boyd Recital Hall on the university’s Glassboro campus. The performance is part of the college’s Faculty Spotlight Series, and held in conjunction with the university's series of events marking the 40th anniversary of the Hollybush Summit at Rowan.

In the midst of celebrating the era in which the Hollybush Summit took place, Cart presents a program which takes its title and its point of view from Benjamin Britten’s Canticle III, a musical setting of Edith Stillwell’s war protest poem, Still Falls the Rain, written in response to the 1940 blitz on London. The second half of the program centers on music by British composer Ralph Vaughan-Williams, including his Merciless Beauty. After serving in World War I, Vaughan-Williams returned to modify several compositions so that his new post-war “revisions” communicated a sense of serenity, colored by a lamenting quality. Likewise, the three rondels of Merciless Beauty express this melancholic legacy of the war.

Cart is joined by pianist Narciso Solero and the Rowan University String Quartet for the evening. Vincenzo Bellini’s Tre Ariette, Franz Liszt’s Tre sonnetti di Petrarca and Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge are also on the bill.

As a performer, Cart has sung leading tenor roles with the Baltimore Opera, Harrisburg Opera, Opera Roanoke, Wolf Trap Opera, Amalfi Coast Festival and the Shaker Mountain Music Festival. He has appeared as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Mexican Cultural Institute, the Philip’s Collection and the White House. His solo orchestral appearances include work with the Indianapolis Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Albany Symphony and Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic, under such eminent conductors as Leonard Bernstein and Raymond Leppard. His discography includes Serenata Mexicana (Centaur Records) and Träume: the Songs of Wagner and Strauss (to be released). Cart holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Maryland, a Master of Music from Indiana University, a Bachelor of Music from DePauw University and has attended the esteemed Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies in Aldeburgh, England.

Boyd Recital Hall is located in Wilson Hall on the campus of Rowan University. All Faculty Spotlight Series events are free and open to the public. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. For directions or additional information, call the box office at (856) 256-4545 or visit www.rowan.edu/fpa.

This recital is part of a year-long series of events planned at the University to commemorate the summit and to explore issues that faced the world then-and now. For more information about Hollybush activities, visit www.rowan.edu/hollybush.

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Author: Press Release-Rowan University