The Marshall University School of Music will present “Love and Loss: The Silent Struggle,” a concert featuring guest artist Dr. Oliver Worthington, baritone, and Marshall Associate Professor Dr. Johan Botes, piano, at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb.16, at Johnson Memorial United Methodist Church, 513 10th St. in Huntington.
The concert includes two song cycles, “Black Dog Songs” by David Maslanka, which addresses the struggle to stay alive in the face of depression, with songs that speak to the struggle of the soul seeking God and feeling the touch of God through depression. Worthington and Botes also will perform “Songs of Travel” by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a British take on the “wayfarer,” a world-weary, yet resolute individual traveling through life, but who shows no naivety or destructive impulses such as in the first cycle.
Worthington is an associate professor of music at Butler University in Indianapolis; Botes is an associate professor of piano at Marshall.
The concert is part of Marshall’s Birke Fine Arts Symposium, which takes place every four years and, this year, celebrates the theme, “Making the unseen, visible.”
“‘Making the unseen, visible’ gives us as musicians the opportunity to shed light on situations that many people encounter on their own life’s journey,” Botes said.
The concert is free and open to all, and will be followed by a reception, as a chance to meet and chat with the artists.
It is presented with sponsorship from the Marshall University College of Arts and Media and the Birke Fine Arts Symposium Endowment, made possible by the generosity of Helen Birke and her daughter, Julie, to showcase the work of artists, writers and scholars.