Ohio University-Zanesville instructor works featured locally and nationally
Charles Savage, music instructor at Ohio University-Zanesville, recently premiered two new pieces of music bringing his total compositions to more than 250. In addition, he has received national recognition for his compositions.
His most recent work entitled Sonnet 122, based on a Shakespearian sonnet, was composed as part of Ohio University-Zanesville’s year-long celebration of providing education in the community for 60 years. Savage composed and conducted the premiere performance of his Fanfares for OUZ for brass quartet at the September celebration. In November, the Ohio University-Zanesville Choral Union premiered Savage’s composition Psalm 150, as an addition to the celebration. Sonnet 122 is a third in the series with a final piece to be premiered at the Spring Ohio University-Zanesville Choral Union concert scheduled for Monday, June 4, 2007, at 7:30 p.m..
Another of Savage’s compositions is set of vocal/ flute pieces entitled “Spirits of the Dead,” which he premiered at a Society of Composer’s conference at Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa. The work features a song cycle for flute and baritone (singer) using the set of poems by American poet Edgar Allen Poe. The pieces are threaded together by a common musical idea and dark sense of eerie aloneness of the solo instruments.
Savage’s composition entitled Mad Rush to the End was performed at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point College of Fine Arts and Communication. It has been performed in multiple concerts in Ohio, West Virginia, Arkansas, Wisconsin and Society of Composers conferences.