Hans Sturm, professor of music, will present a faculty recital at 7:30 p.m. April 9 in Westbrook Recital Hall, Room 119.
The recital is free and open to the public and will be webcast live.
The recital will be Sturm’s final faculty recital before he retires at the end of the semester. The program includes seven pieces that Sturm has composed, along with one by Tom Larson, associate professor of composition. Sturm (bass) will be joined on stage by Larson (piano); Darryl White, associate professor of music (trumpet); and Jackie Allen, who is Sturm's wife, (vocals).
Bookending the concert are two pieces that Sturm describes as “guided improvisations.” The program opens with Sturm’s “Deep Tones for Peace” (2025), which comes out of a project organized by USC’s Mark Dresser that asked bass players to send them recordings of meditative kinds of performances.
The program ends with Sturm’s “Braided Pillars” (2024), which is based on work Sturm did with Roscoe Mitchell, a founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) based in Chicago.
“He moved to Madison, and we worked together for the better part of about 12 years and did some concerts and some recordings together,” Sturm said. “At the time this initial concept came up for ‘Braided Pillars,’ he was working on circular breathing and created a record on the Black Saint label called ‘The Flow of Things’ with his group called The Note Factory, which was a saxophone, two bass players and two drummers. So it was so many notes per square inch.”
Also on the program are three pieces that he will perform with Larson: Larson’s “Still” (2016), as well as “Blanton Hymn” (2010) and “Brownian Motion” (2010), both by Sturm. They will be joined by White on “Brownian Motion.”
“These are pieces that we had developed when we went to the European bass convention in Copenhagen and played in the Royal Opera House there, and then on the way back, we stopped in Paris and recorded at Studio Davout,” Sturm said.
The final three pieces on the program will be performed with Allen: “NOLA Love Song” (2005), which was written for New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; “Sing Your Song” (2020), which was part of the Nebraska Project that looked at musicians that came out of Nebraska; and “Rose Fingered Dawn” (2017), which was the title track of one of Allen’s records.
“These are pieces that I wrote for Jackie over the years,” Sturm said.
The audience can expect to hear a little of everything at the concert.
“I don’t want to say ‘Expect the unexpected,’ but it is sort of a retrospective,” Sturm said. “There’s a wide range of music.”
Sturm has taught at Nebraska since 2011. He has performed as a soloist, chamber, orchestral, jazz and improvisational musician throughout Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, Africa and the United States. He has served as president of the International Society of Bassists and recently wrote a biography of his mentor, “75 Years on 4 Strings: The Life and Music of François Rabbath.” Learn more about Sturm and his work in the Glenn Korff School of Music.
