Concerts celebrate founding dean

Concerts celebrate founding dean’s 70th birthday

A celebratory weekend of performances of music of Samuel Jones is scheduled for Feb. 10-13 at the Shepherd School of Music.
Jones founded the Shepherd School in 1975, was its first dean and continued as a faculty member for almost a quarter century.

Celebrating his 70th birthday this year, Jones is currently in his eighth year as composer-in-residence of the Seattle Symphony.

Sam Jones

The first of three events will be a Feb. 10 concert of his chamber music, with the first half in Duncan Recital Hall and the second half in Edythe Bates Old Recital Hall and Grand Organ.

The second event, Friday, Feb. 11, is a concert of the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra, which will include his work “Machines,” a suite in two movements derived from a larger symphonic work titled “Roundings: Musings and Meditations on Texas New Deal Murals.” This suite commemorates the oil well, significant as a strong, representative image of Texas, and the locomotive, once important to the development of many cities of the interior United States.

The third event, Sunday, Feb. 13, is a concert of the Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra, which will include his work “Janus.” In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of beginnings, depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions. Written for the opening of the Seattle Symphony’s new Benaroya Hall, this work expresses both a nostalgic, backward glance and a zestful, exhilarating expression of optimism. It received its premiere in September 1998.

Admission for each of the three concerts is free, and tickets are not required.