SCC Welcomes Guest Conductor to Lead First-Ever Performance of 100-Year-Old Ecuadorian Work

Published: 03/29/2011

The program will include the first-ever performance of an opera written nearly 100 years ago. SCC will perform “The Final Death Scene” from the opera, “Cumandá,” originally written by Sixto María Durán, and transcribed recently by John L. Walker, SCC associate professor of music, who has a doctorate in musical arts. Walker discovered the composer’s handwritten score on a recent research trip to Ecuador as a Fulbright Scholar in 2009, and transcribed the final section of the piece for the concert band performance. The performance will feature SCC adjunct instructors of voice Erin Haupt as Cumandá, and Becky Thorn in the role of Cumandá’s mother, Pona.

Also part of the program for the evening will be the first known American performance of Ecuadorian composer Luis Humberto Salgado’s “Atahualpa,” which he composed in commemoration of the fall of the Incan empire.

Oviedo, born in Quito, Ecuador, in 1974, is a prominent composer and conductor in that country who has won numerous awards for his musical activity both within Ecuador as well as internationally. He has conducted a number of orchestras in Ecuador and is the director of the Ensamble Quito 6, a small ensemble devoted to Ecuador’s traditional as well as contemporary music. Oviedo and Walker have known each other since the late 1990s, when Walker was working in Ecuador.

For more information, contact Walker at 636-922-8538 or jwalker@stchas.edu.

St. Charles Community College is a public, comprehensive two-year community college with associate degrees and certificate programs in the arts, business, sciences and career-technical fields. SCC provides workforce training and community-based personal and professional development as well as cultural, recreational and entertainment opportunities. For more information, visit www.stchas.edu.