March 26, 2025

Contact Mary Ellen Haupert at 608-796-3770 or mehaupert@viterbo.edu

VITERBO OUT OF OUR MINDS CHAMBER MUSIC TO FEATURE WORKS FOR SOPRANO, BASSOON, AND PIANO APRIL 5

LA CROSSE, Wis. – The final concert of this season’s Out of Our Minds Chamber Series will feature the talents of soprano Jennifer Campbell, bassoonist Jefferson Campbell, and pianist Mary Ellen Haupert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 5 in the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center Nola Starling Recital Hall.

The program will feature Sea Smoke on Gitchigami for soprano, bassoon, and piano by Jenni Brandon, as well as works by other living women composers, Sonnets from the Portuguese by Libby Larsen, Sonata for Bassoon and Piano by Nancy Galbraith, and Where Mittens Disappear by Mary Ellen Haupert.

The signature work of this concert was commissioned by Jefferson Campbell during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and a music professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth at the time, and received a University of Minnesota Imagine Grant for a new composition for bassoon in a chamber music setting.

Campbell was only “focusing on the weather phenomenon” when he thought of a musical composition that expressed sea smoke. Also called sea fog, sea smoke is an unusual and rare occurrence taking form as barely visible hovering mist to towering walls of rising clouds. Sea smoke is formed when cold air hits the warmer water of Lake Superior, creating a layer of water that cools rapidly and condenses and forms vapor. He had seen photos of it and experienced it in person. When he tried to describe Duluth to people who had never been to the city, he showed them pictures of sea smoke. He thought it “could be an interesting image to try to describe musically.” Campbell is currently the dean of the College of the Arts and Media at Central Michigan University.

The concert is free and open to the public. There will be a free will offering to cover artist fees and marketing expenses.

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