Local Music

The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra's concert Friday will feature new music by American composer Derek Bermel. 

A native New Yorker, in 2009 he wrote A Shout, a Whisper, and a Trace to honor his hometown as well as the great expatriate Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, whose sometimes sorrowful letters from New York to his friends and students were an inspiration.

A WWII draftee faces death by firing squad for desertion. He'll be allowed to live if he serves out the rest of the war. That's the extreme situation dealt with in "A Soldier's Tale," a unique stage piece of narration, dance, and music featuring a 1918 score by Igor Stravinsky and updated, modern (sometimes vulgar) text by Kurt Vonnegut. 

A collaboration between Fontana Chamber Arts and the WMU School of Music, it will receive performances in the Dalton Center Multi-Media Room Friday and Saturday.