Composer performs, discusses her music

Beth Wiemann, a clarinetist and award-winning composer, performs and discusses her music at 1 p.m. Thursday, March 7, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. The presentation is free and open to the public.

Wiemann is an assistant professor of music at the University of Maine. In her presentation, she will discuss her work and play excerpts from it on the clarinet with electronic accompaniment.

Her compositions have been performed by such ensembles as Parnassus, Earplay and ALEA III, and by singers such as D’Anna Fortunato and Susan Narucki, who will record a CD of Wiemann’s music next year. She has received awards from the Colorado New Music Festival and American Women Composers.

Wiemann is active as a clarinetist and has commissioned a number of works for the instrument by other composers. In February, she performed “Cerberus,” a concerto written for her by David Rakowski, in California with the Empyrean Ensemble.

As a composer in a genre out of the mainstream, Wiemann says, “I’ve had good experiences with performers and audiences in Maine, with my UMaine colleagues in particular.” The state’s following for new music may be geographically dispersed, she adds, but “the audiences don’t automatically put new music in a separate listening category, as they do in other places.”

For more information about the event, please call 207-786-6135.