The Heisey Wind Ensemble concludes its 2000-2001 season with a concert at 8 p.m. on Sunday (April 22) in Swasey Chapel on the Denison University campus in Granville. The concert features Assistant Professor Kristen Smith-Stoner as flute soloist. Tickets, available at the door, cost $10 for adults, $5 for senior citizens and students. Students under 12 are free, as are University faculty, staff and students with their University identification.

Music Director Richard Blatti will lead the Heisey Wind Ensemble in a program of dance music from different periods of history and cultures: ragtime music by Scott Joplin, dance music from Henry VIII, Australian dance music, Gilbert and Sullivan ballet dance music, impressionistic dance music by John Barnes Chance, and some Stan Kenton selections. Smith-Stoner will perform Gluck's "Minuet and Dance of the Blessed Spirits" with the ensemble.

Smith-Stoner has performed in prestigious competitions around the country, including the National Flute Association's Young Artist Competition in Atlanta in 1999, the Flute Talk Magazine Competition in Chicago in 1997 and 1998, and the Myrna Brown Competition in Dallas in 1998, 1999, and 2000. This year, she has been asked to perform at the Sixth Festival of Women Composers and will present a lecture-recital at the National Flute Association convention in Dallas in August on flute music by women composers.

Coordinator of woodwind studies at Denison University, Smith-Stoner teaches the flute, as well as classes in ethnomusicology, music history, and women in music and leads karimba ensembles (Zimbabwean thumb piano), and woodwind ensembles. She earned her bachelor's degree in music at the University of Texas and her master's and doctorate at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Her primary research interests include performance and analysis of flute music by Latin American composers and women composers.

The Heisey Wind Ensemble was formed in February of 1985 by J M Day and Don Workman to provide an outlet for skilled musicians interested in playing traditional concert band literature. The group is sponsored in part by the Denison University Music Department. The Heisey Wind Ensemble and Denison have been working together since September 1986. The term Wind Ensemble designates a band in which nearly every part is played by one person only. The Heisey Wind Ensemble membership consists of music educators, college students, and community musicians from many other professions.

Music Director and Principal Conductor Blatti serves as associate professor of conducting and associate director of bands at Ohio State University. Blatti also is the music director and conductor of the OSU Symphonic Band as well as supervising all aspects of the undergraduate conducting program. He received the OSU School of Music Distinguished Teaching Award in 1991. He also is an adjunct faculty member at Denison University. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Northwestern University, and is doing post-graduate work at Michigan State University.

The Heisey Wind Ensemble assistant conductor is Robert Neumann. He is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and earned his master's degree at Ohio State. He retired from public school teaching in 1983, having taught in the Richmond Dale (Ross County), Washington Court House, Zanesville and Newark school systems. Neumann served as solo/ensemble/band adjudicator for the Ohio Music Education Association for many years and he continues to adjudicate marching band contests.

For more information about the Heisey Wind Ensemble, please contact Doug Moran at 740-344-8333 or (morand@denison.edu).

About Denison:

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,100 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in rigorous scholarship, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

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