Thursday, February 10, 2000

WILMINGTON, N.C. -- The UNCW Department of Music will present a choral concert at 4 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 20, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church (16th and Market Streets in Wilmington). Admission is free and the public is invited.

Joe Hickman, associate professor of music, will conduct the performance, which features the combined forces of the UNCW Concert Choir and Chamber Singers (85 voices) with orchestra. Vocal soloists will include UNCW assistant professor Nancy King (soprano) and visiting baritone Emery Stephens of Boston, Massachusetts.

Musical works will include Mozart's Regina Coelii in B-flat, for soprano and chorus with orchestra; Five Mystical Songs for lyric baritone and chorus by Ralph Vaughan Williams; and Fauré's popular Requiem. The orchestra will also perform the "Adagietto" movement from Mahler's Symphony No. 5

Hickman came to UNCW in 1979 from Indiana University, where he earned a Doctor of Music degree. He has served as Director of Choral Activities at UNCW since 1979, and also as conductor and Musical Director of the Wilmington Symphony for a number of years. Hickman is active in the American Choral Directors' Association, publishing articles and reviews of choral music for the Choral Journal. He also publishes performing editions of choral music for Masterworks Press of Olympia, Washington. Within the community, he is a member of the Alliance for a Regional Concert Hall and as a church musician in various parishes in the community, including interim organist-choirmaster at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in 1998.

King came to UNCW in 1998 and has become a favorite to the musical community in Wilmington, both as a singing teacher and as a performer. She has performed with the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra and has been a clinician for the East Carolina (Episcopal) Diocesan Music Conference. She is a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Minnesota and a professional member of the choir of the Oregon Bach Festival. Both professors King and Hickman collaborated last year in a performance of Bach's Cantata 51 that was aired several times on UNCW-TV.

Emery Stephens is a frequent soloist and ensemble vocalist in many groups in the Boston area, throughout New England, and in Europe. At Boston's Symphony Hall, Mr. Stephens was featured as a soloist with the Handel and Haydn Society in Purcell's Come Ye Sons of Art, and excerpts from Handel's Messiah. He has performed with the Boston Lyric Opera and at Harvard University, including a featured performance in Monteverdi's Orfeo at the Boston Early Music Festival. In addition, Mr. Stephens is a frequent performer of gospel music and spirituals, having appeared at the 27th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast in Boston.