UWG News Item
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Metropolitan Opera Trombonist to perform at UWG
December 21, 2005
CARROLLTON, GA - Grammy winner and Metropolitan Opera trombonist Steve Norrell will perform a recital in honor of his father, the late Dr. Lemuel Norrell, professor emeritus of English at the University of West Georgia.
The recital is scheduled Monday, Jan. 9, at 8:15 p.m. in Cashen Hall on the UWG campus. Norrell will also teach trombone students in a master class at 3:30 p.m., Monday, Jan. 9 in Cashen Hall. The Department of Music is sponsoring the performance and both events are free.
Professor Lemuel N. Norrell joined the English faculty of West Georgia College in 1964 and taught there until his retirement in 1989. His love of teaching and his inspirational impact upon students are still remembered today.
Norrell has played bass trombone with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 1981. He began studying trombone in the fourth grade at Central School in Carrollton while his father taught at West Georgia.
Norrell is a five-time Grammy winner with the Met and has participated in more than 30 Live from Lincoln Center telecasts and has taught at the Manhattan School of Music since 1988.
Plans for the recital began last year as a way of honoring his father but the elder Norrell passed away before the recital could be scheduled.
“When Father first told me last winter that he had a tumor in a lung, one of my initial thoughts was that I wanted to have an opportunity for him to hear me play a solo performance,” said Norrell. “He'd heard me play operas at the Metropolitan Opera and heard our orchestra play orchestral concerts in Carnegie hall, but he had never heard me play in a live solo capacity. As fate would have it, he survived the initial procedure, but was not as fortunate with the complications that followed. Although my father will physically not be there for this performance, I'm quite sure that his spirit will be and that he would be thrilled that three of his four sons will be together.”
Two of Norrell’s brothers are traveling from the states
of Washington and Idaho to be at the recital.
Dr. John Crafton, UWG professor of English, said his colleague earned
a reputation with faculty and staff.
“I knew his reputation as a serious and careful teacher,” said Crafton. “He was demanding and inspiring. The English majors loved his classes in British Literature, Romanticism to the Moderns.”
Lemuel Norrell graduated from Furman University after completing distinguished military service during WWII and earned a master’s degree in English from the University of Virginia. He moved to Georgia and co-founded Norrell Personnel Services in Atlanta and later completed his Ph.D. in English at Florida State University.
Steve Norrell earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at The Juilliard School. Steve lives in Haworth, New Jersey with his wife, harpist Karen Stern, and his daughters Jesse and Kim.
Pianist Hanako Yamagata and tenor trombonist Mark McConnell will accompany Norrell. The challenging and varied recital program includes the Trilogy for Bass Trombone by Tom Dossett, the Concerto in One Movement by Lebedev, an arrangement of Gustav Mahler’s “Songs of a Wayfarer,” the Concerto for Bass Tuba by Ralph Vaughan Williams, the Concerto for Bass Trombone by Eric Ewazen, and “Conversations” by Charles Small.
Norrell has played on five Grammy Award-winning recordings with Maestro James Levine, and performed with conductors Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Erich Leinsdorf, Carlos Kleiber, Kurt Masur, Seiji Owaza, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Zubin Mehta.
He has also toured and performed with the New York Philharmonic and performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Pianist Hanako Yamagata is a native of Tokyo, Japan, with an M.M. from the Manhattan School of Music. She performs frequently with the Martha Graham Dance Company and with instrumentalists from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. Yamagata is currently on the piano faculty of the Spence School and accompanying staff of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center Summer Vocal Workshop and the Juilliard School.
Friends, former students, and colleagues of Norrell’s are encouraged to attend this memorial concert. For more information, call 678-839-6262.
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