The Stones River Chamber Players, MTSU’s ensemble-in-residence, will conclude their “Faculty Favorites” season with a free public concert at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 8, in Hinton Music Hall inside MTSU’s Wright Music Building.

The university’s ensemble-in-residence, all of whom teach in MTSU’s School of Music, will continue the season’s theme with performances of:

• “Quartet for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon” by Heitor Villa-Lobos, a favorite of oboe professor Laura Ann Ross;
• a premiere of a new work by music theory professor Michael Linton, “Plymouth Board”; and
• “Quartet No. 3 for Piano and Strings, Op. 60” by Johannes Brahms, selected by viola professor Henry Haffner.

Ross, who called the Villa-Lobos piece “both challenging and fun to play,” will be accompanied by Stones River Chamber Players members Deanna Little on flute, Todd Waldecker on clarinet and Gil Perel on bassoon.

Linton’s portion of the program is an excerpt of his larger, three-movement trio for piano, clarinet and cello called “Stages on Life’s Way,” which he modeled on Kierkegaard’s philosophical treatise of the same name.

SRCP violinist Andrea Dawson, pianist Arunesh Nadgir and clarinetist Waldecker will perform Linton’s piece.

“We had asked the composition faculty if they had any favorite compositions for which they would like to receive another performance,” said SRCP co-coordinator Angela DeBoer. Linton took the idea to another level, she said, reworking and expanding ideas from a previous composition and transforming them into a new work.

The Brahms quartet, which Haffner said has been one of his favorites since he first performed it in college, was begun in the 1850s, but the composer left it unfinished until the 1870s.

“Because of this long gestation period, I think this quartet is a really interesting combination of the sturm und drang of the young Brahms but also the refinement and technical precision of his maturity,” Haffner explained.

Haffner will be joined in the Brahms performance by cellist Christine Kim and Dawson and Nadgir.

For more information on MTSU School of Music concerts, call 615-898-2493 or visit www.mtsumusic.com and click on the “Concert Calendar” link. You also can click on the poster above for more information about the Stones River Chamber Players.