NMSU Music Department, Archives ‘very special collaboration’ is April 25

“We've created a very special collaboration between NMSU Archives and the Music Department,” said NMSU Regents Professor and tubist Jim Shearer.

NMSU’s Wind Symphony and Choir Concert will be 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 25, in Atkinson Recital Hall, NMSU Music Building, 1075 N. Horseshoe St. on campus.

Tickets are $10 at the NMSU ticket office and $15.70 if purchased online at www.ticketmaster.com. Enter “Wind Symphony & Masterworks Choir” in the search box.

The concert is “a celebration of NMSU artists,” featuring wind and choral music by Warner Hutchison (1930-2019) and Sam Holloman (1958-2016) and the poetry of former Las Cruces poet laureate Keith Wilson (1927-2009).

Hutchison “was composer-in-residence at NMSU and professor in the music department 1967-96,” said NMSU Archives and Special Collections Department Head Dennis Daily. “He also headed NMSU’s Experimental Music Laboratory during the 1970s and was music department head 1979-84. Hutchison’s collection in University Archives contains original hand-written manuscripts and scores, as well as printed and published music, from throughout his musical life – more than 150 works in all.

 “Jim Shearer came in to take a look at the archive a little more than a year ago,” Daily said. “We spent a couple hours going through the boxes of Hutchison’s original musical manuscripts. We both got pretty excited seeing these original scores, many of which Jim concluded had only been performed once, and some not at all.

“We found the music for Warner’s big orchestral and choral work ‘Paso Por Aqui,’ a collaboration with poet Keith Wilson, who taught in the NMSU English Department at the time,” Daily said. “We have Keith Wilson’s papers in our collection as well. We loved the idea of these two NMSU artists collaborating on a work with a decidedly New Mexico theme. Jim was incredibly enthusiastic about the idea of putting a concert together of this work and he has really made this project happen. It’s been exciting to see this concert move from an idea to reality and to see new life breathed into this very local musical work, by two of this university’s great artists,” Daily said.

In addition to holding the music and papers of Hutchison and Wilson, the archive is about to take in the entire catalog and papers of Hollomon, who taught in the NMSU Music Department in the 1990s and early 2000s and composed for middle and high school and college bands, Shearer said. Some of Holloman’s works were premiered by Mesilla Valley Community Band, of which he was a member.

The concert will feature Hutchison’s choral works “Three Sacred Anthems: Sing a New Song, Alleluia and So In All Things,” along with the Hutchison/Wilson collaboration “Paso por Aqui” and Holloman’s “Tuba Concerto,” performed by Shearer. NMSU music professor Jacob Dalager will play trumpet on “Sing a New Song.”

During his time as head of the Music Department, Hutchison “was the driving force behind the design and construction of the NMSU Music Center,” Shearer said. “He collaborated closely with the Wenger Corporation, which provided all the music stands, chairs, stage shell, practice room modules, right down to the doors on every room, which are special, soundproof designs. The building was used by Wenger as a model for music center construction for many years.”

Holloman was Shearer’s college roommate at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. Both followed former NMSU Music Department Head William Clark when Clark moved from Delta State to NMSU.

“It's a big night and the first of a number of planned collaborations with NMSU Archives,” Shearer said.