A concert will serve as the U.S. premier of a composition and a benefit for music students at Fresno Pacific University.
"Music of Peace and War" will be at 7 p.m. Saturday, November 5, 2005, at College Community Church: Mennonite Brethren, 2529 Willow Avenue, Clovis. The program features "Chungking: May 5, 1939," with music by Larry Warkentin, FPU professor emeritus, and text by Herold Wiens.
Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for children 14 years old and younger. Proceeds will go to the Dietrich Friesen Memorial Music Scholarship Fund at FPU. The event is hosted by the university's Council of Senior Professionals. For more information or to make reservations, contact the FPU Music Office at 453-2267.
The performers are Mel Braun, baritone, and Laura Loewen, piano. Braun performs early music, new music and opera as a soloist and in productions and has interest in jazz and church music. As a faculty member at the University of Manitoba, he developed the Contemporary Opera Lab and received outreach and merit teaching awards.
Loewen has appeared in concerts throughout Canada and the United States. She is an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba and is on the faculty of Newly United Operatic Vocalists Association opera training program in Edmonton.
Warkentin taught at FPU for 40 years before retiring in 2002. His compositions have earned National Endowments of the Arts grants and awards from state music associations and the National Society of Composers Authors and Publishers.
Herold Wiens witnessed the 1939 Japanese bombing of Chungking, China, in which 5,000 civilians were killed and more than 10,000 injured. The son of Chinese missionary Frank J. Wiens, Herold worked at the U.S. Consulate. The text is taken from an impassioned letter Wiens wrote his family on the agony of war.