For Immediate Release Contact: Barbara K. Laskin
April 15, 2004 Doug Stone
(651) 696-6203

Composer and Department Chair to Give Inaugural Lecture
Featuring her Music, 3 p.m., Sunday, April 18, 2004

St. Paul, Minn. - Marjorie Merryman, Macalester College Music Department chair, will give her inaugural lecture as the Harry M. Drake Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Fine Arts, 3 p.m., Sunday, April 18, 2004, in the Concert Hall, Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center, 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, Minn. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Sunday's program will feature Merryman's compositions including: "Riversonata," performed by Nancy Oliveros, violin and Mark Mazullo, piano; "String Quartet," with The Artaria String Quartet (Ray Shows, violin; Nancy Oliveros, violin; Renee Moore-Skerik, viola and Thomas Rosenberg, cello); and "Chinese Moon Poems," performed by the Macalester College Choir of Women, Robert Morris, director.

An accomplished composer, Merryman has won awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the International Society for Contemporary Music, among many others. Merryman's work, "One Blood," premiered in Boston last November. She was also recently invited to be Composer-in-Residence for the Billings, Mont., Orchestra. She has been commissioned by the New England Philharmonic, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the American Guild of Organists and many other organizations. Her music has been played throughout the United States as well as in England, France, Sweden, Poland, Russia, Taiwan, Korea, Israel and Greece.

Merryman has taught at Harvard, MIT, and New England Conservatory and was on the faculty of Boston University School for the Arts for 23 years before joining the Macalester faculty in 2003. At Macalester, she teaches theory, orchestration and composition.

Macalester College is a private liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,851 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, diversity and service to society.