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New Music at Willamette University presents a free 60th Birthday Concert for Composer-in-Residence John Peel. The concert will present selections from three decades of Peel's chamber and vocal music output. Performers will include the Oregon Symphony String Quartet, organist Paul Klemme, sopranos Janice Johnson and Allison Swensen-Mitchell, baritone Kevin Walsh, cellist Hekun Wu, and pianists Elise Yun and Janet Coleman.

Peel came to Willamette University in 1990 to occupy the newly created Irene Gerlinger Swindells Professor of Music Endowed Chair. Important recent premieres of Peel's music include the "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra," premiered by the Riverside Symphony in Lincoln Center with violinist Joseph Lin, and the "Sinfonia Romanza," premiered by the Oregon Symphony in 2005 under Maestro James DePreist. At Willamette University Peel has taught music composition, as well as courses on opera, Wagner and the history of 20th century music. In addition he has created the concert series, New Music at Willamette, a series devoted to presenting the finest composers and performers of our time.

The Oct. 29 Birthday Concert will take place in Hudson Hall in the Mary Stuart Rogers Music Center on the Willamette campus. The public is welcome. For more information, contact the Willamette University Music Department at 503-370-6255.

10-18-2006