School of Music presents concert featuring Governor's Arts Award winners

Governor’s Arts Award recipients R. Carlos Nakai and ASU School of Music Professor James DeMars will be featured in a concert at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 8, at Katzin Hall in ASU's School of Music Building. The concert is free and will be webcast live.

The concert will feature special guest artist mezzo-soprano Isola Jones, who sang more than 500 performances at the Metropolitan Opera with world-class artists such as Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Leontyne Price and conductors Georg Solti and James Levine. Jones also performed with Nakai in two presentations and the recording of DeMars’ opera-oratorio, Guadalupe, Our Lady of the Roses.

Also performing is the distinguished cellist Richard Bock, who was chosen at the age of 18 by Leopold Stokowski to be principal cellist of the American Symphony Orchestra. Bock was also principal cellist at the Buffalo Symphony and then served as principal cellist with the Phoenix Symphony for 24 years. He has had a distinguished international and educational career performing throughout the world and serving as artist in residence at the Schools of Fine Art at both Arizona State University and the University of Arizona.

Also appearing will be Alan Handelsman (flute), Mark Sunkett (narrator), Sonja Branch (vibraphone), C. Sipho Mabingani (djembe) and the Valley String Quartet comprised of Mia Detwiler (violin), Anne Sorensen (violin), Allyson Wuenschel (viola), and Zack Clark (cello).

Nakai, the world’s premier performer of the Native American flute, received the Governor’s Arts Award in 1992. DeMars received the award in 2010 and is the only composer to earn this recognition.

The concert will include chamber works featuring the Native American flute as well as other chamber compositions by DeMars, a professor of music theory and composition at the ASU School of Music in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.