Dan Nebel/Courtesy photo
Frances Meier/Courtesy photo
COMMUNITY NEWS
The community is invited to a free concert at 12 p.m., Friday, July 14 at the United Church of Los Alamos, 2525 Canyon Road, featuring a piece written by Los Alamos composer Frances Meier. The piece is for French horn and piano and is entitled “New Mexico Mesas.” It will be performed by Daniel Nebel, horn, who commissioned it for his senior doctoral recital; and Frances Meier, piano. It has been published by Corniworld Publications.
The work is in three movements, each evoking an aspect of the New Mexico landscape. The first movement is entitled “Sunrise.” It portrays the colorlessness of pre-dawn gradually lightening to the moment when, as Rudyard Kipling puts it, “…the sun comes up like thunder” ….and then spreads its light over the landscape. The second movement, “Shadows and Sunshine,” captures the play of light and shadow, and also of the wind, on the mountainsides and mesas. The third movement is “November.” The mood is subdued, that of late fall, when summertime has dwindled down to the quiet and peacefulness of approaching winter.
In addition, each performer will play several solo pieces. Frances will play music by Debussy, Faure, and Philip Aaberg, and Dan will play works by Hans-Jurg Sommer, J.F. Gallay, Paquito d’Rivera, and Ricardo Matosinhos, some of which will be performed on period instruments.
Dan Nebel is an accomplished French hornist, church organist, music director, and educator whose diverse career has taken him across the United States. Currently the principal horn of the Monterey Symphony, horn instructor at Colorado State University Pueblo, and organist at Arvada United Methodist Church, he served as a bandsman with the United States Air Force Band of the Golden West for five years. He toured extensively throughout the Western United States including regular appearances at the Hollywood Bowl. Mr. Nebel currently freelances throughout Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and California. Nebel will complete his Doctorate of Music at the University of Northern Colorado specializing in postural studies of horn players in August; he holds degrees in music performance from the Eastman School of Music and Wichita State University. He enjoys hiking, backpacking, trail running, cycling, skiing, and rock climbing with his wife Erin in the beautiful public lands of the Western United States.
Frances Meier has a BA in piano performance from Duke University and her Master of Music in composition from Catholic University. She was the featured composer in 1999 for the Pro Coro Women Composers concert and the commissioned composer in 2004 for the New Mexico Music Teachers Association. Her compositions have been performed by the Los Alamos Choral Society both locally and on a European tour. Besides “New Mexico Mesas,” other published pieces include “A Winter Carol,” an arrangement for choir and piano of “In the Bleak Midwinter” (Augsburg Fortress); and “Autumn, Silver and Brown” for woodwind quintet (Trevco Publications). She teaches piano, organ, and music theory, has attained the level of Colleague with the American Guild of Organists, and plays regularly for the United Church of Los Alamos. She was the guest organist with the Los Alamos Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Saint-Saens’s Organ Symphony in November, 2008 and has performed solo piano concerts locally. She enjoys hiking, walking, and swimming and loves that she can be on a hike just by walking out her back door!
The concert is free and open to the public.