SONICT, a campus group that focuses on contemporary and new music, is hosting two guest artists this week. 
SONICT has been on campus since 2005. It started because people wanted to have more music on campus, according to SONICT directors.
The current SONICT ensemble directors are Associate Professor Matt Sintchak, Lecturer Tobie Wilkinson and Associate Professor Jeff Herriott. Its purpose is to get the students involved.
SONICT, a mix of both students and faculty members, invites guest artists to perform in concerts held about four to five times a semester.
The first guest artist is Katherine Hoover, a famous composer and flute player from New York. She will perform in “The Music of Katherine Hoover” at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 16 in the Light Recital Hall.
The day before the performance, she will attend two World of the Arts classes, as well as give a seminar presentation on what she’s been influenced by and the processes of how she composes.
Professors Robin Fellows and Myung Hee Chung, along with Linda Kimball, will also perform a piece called “Summer Night for Flute, Horn, and Piano.” Fellows will be playing the flute, Chung will be on piano and Kimball on the horn.
The concert includes a saxophone quartet and a flute choir of about 15 students. Senior Lisa Bong will perform a flute solo.
Madison native Gloria Chuang will play a piece titled “Thin Ice” on piano. Sintchak mentioned Hoover wrote this piece for Chuang, who performed the premiere of the piece.
“If they like music and are interested in music, they should come,” Hoover said. “There’s a variety of music and all kinds of interesting people playing it. It should be fun.”
Fellows said students should attend the event because “she’s a composer who has had over 65 pieces of music and 8,000 CDs. She’s one of the most played composers in the world.”
The next performance is The Strike Duo featuring Ithaca College faculty member Jeffery Meyer on Piano and Paul Vaillancourt on percussion. The event will take place at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 18 in the Light Recital Hall.
Meyer and Vaillancourt have played in concerts like this all over the world. They’ve played in China and Russia, but this will be their first time performing at UW-Whitewater.
Meyer, a pianist from New York, and Vaillancourt, a percussionist from Georgia, get together several times each year to rehearse and perform.
Meyer also said he will play some percussion instruments in their upcoming performance.
“Each of these pieces are very different from each other, and it will be an experience that is very unique and captivating,” Meyer said. “Paul has some very unusual instruments. He has these incredible Chinese opera [vaults] from various fellows called [willadels].”
Meyer and Vaillancourt will play “songs written for them by living composers,” as Meyer put it. Two of them will be solos.
“He [distributes] these instruments to the composers, and the composers wrote them specifically for him and these instruments,” Meyers said. “So I think all these qualifications stand out in various ways because the instruments are so interesting.”
Meyer recommends the event to everyone, no matter what musical background they have, because they probably won’t have the opportunity to hear these “unique pieces” otherwise.
Ticket prices for the Katherine Hoover concert are $3 for students with ID and $5 for the general public. For ticket prices for the Strike Duo concert, call the box office at 262-472-2222.
