The Skidmore College Department of Music will open the academic year with "Animal Crackers," a family friendly concert on Sunday, Sept. 8. Free and open to the public, the event begins at 5 p.m. in the college's Arthur Zankel Music Center, Ladd Concert Hall.
Faculty members Evan Mack and Patrice Malatestinic will perform on piano and horn, respectively, in an animal-inspired program that features music, visual art, spoken word, and dance. Guest artists are Juliann Welch, horn, and Catherine Stratton, who will dance.
The program includes music by such composers as St. Saens, Plog, Clearfield, and more. Mack has composed a new piece titled "Carnival of the Microbes" for this event. There will be a reading from the children's novel The One an Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, and Stafford will dance the "Dying Swan," staged by Denise Warner Limoli, associate professor of dance at Skidmore.
Composer and pianist Mack, visiting assistant professor of music at Skidmore, is the winner of the 2013 Atlanta Opera's 24-hour Opera Project. He is currently at work on his newest opera, an adaptation of the best-selling novel Roscoe, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy.
Malatestinic teaches French horn and coaches Skidmore's horn ensemble. She earned a B.A. degree at the University at Albany, State University of New York; and a master of music degree at the College of Saint Rose.