Music school will host Weill Festival

Events will note arrival of treasure trove of manuscripts

The Eastman School will present a Kurt Weill Festival November 11-14, with music and opera performances, a competition for singers, exhibits of manuscripts, and scholarly presentations about this major German-American composer.

The Kurt Weill Festival celebrates the transfer of all of the original manuscripts of Weill's compositions owned by his Viennese publisher, Univeral Edition A.G., to the school's Sibley Music Library. The collection, on long-term loan to Sibley, includes the manuscripts to such works as The Three Penny Opera, containing Weill's memorable "Mack the Knife," along with The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny and most of the works to be performed during the festival.

The availability of these materials in an academic music library is enabling editors and scholars to complete work on the Kurt Weill Edition, jointly published by The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and European American Music Corporation.

"Eastman has become one of the leading centers for Weill research in the world," said professor Kim Kowalke, a prominent Weill scholar and president of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music.

Weill is best known as a composer of operas in collaboration with author Bertolt Brecht. He and his wife, actress and singer Lotte Lenya, emigrated during the Nazi regime to the United States, where he wrote such classic American musicals as Lady in the Dark and One Touch of Venus, as well as the Broadway operas Street Scene and Lost in the Stars.

Among concert highlights:

November 11, 8 p.m., Kilbourn Hall: Eastman Wind Ensemble, the Weill Violin Concerto. Also on the program: the American premiere of jazz orchestra arrangements of Weill's songs and the Mahagonny Songspiel, Weill's first collaboration with Bertolt Brecht.

November 13, 8 p.m., Eastman Theatre: Eastman Philharmonia, Weill's Whitman Songs and Weill's Symphony No. 2. Also on the program: Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber. Teresa Stratas, renowned opera singer and Weill aficionado, will receive an honorary doctorate.

November 14, 8 p.m. Kilbourn Hall: Eastman Virtuosi Concert, featuring instrumental solos by Eastman faculty, with baritone Thomas Paul, in an evening of chamber music by Kurt Weill, including Vom Tod im Wald, and the Kleine Dreigroschenmusik.

For details on other events, including a vocal competition and manuscript exhibits, call x4-1350.