Concert Celebrates Two Lives in Music

 

A concert celebrating the husband-and-wife musical and teaching legacy of John Marvin and Deborah Kavasch will resonate through Snider Recital Hall April 20. 

The selections range from a vocally whimsical “The Tortoise & the Hare,” composed and performed by Kavasch, to cascading water sounds of an ethereal nocturne, to Marvin’s composition evoking the nation’s grief and rage following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. 

Kavasch, coordinator of theory/composition since 1979 and chair of the Stanislaus State Department of Music from 2006-2016, will be joined in the performance by guest reed quintet, Paradise Winds, music faculty members Joseph Wiggett (baritone), Donna Harrison (viola), Daniel Davies (violoncello), Jamie Dubberly (bass trombone), Sarah Chan (piano), conductor Daniel Afonso, staff accompanist Yan Yan Chan, University student Matthew Verona (harp), and guest artists Elizabeth Kidwell and Alison Peltier (violin). 

Musical pairings of reeds, strings, piano and voice will shift throughout the program, mixing in the performers in Paradise Winds. The group will open the concert with a reed quintet by Marvin and close the show with another by Kavasch. It will be the first time either piece will be performed in their entirety in California. 

Marvin, who died in 2018 at 86, had careers in both mathematics and music. In the 1950s he worked by day as a data analyst at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and by night playing oboe and English horn in the Kennedy Center Opera and Ballet Orchestra in Washington D.C.  He later joined the music faculty of The Evergreen State College and came out of retirement to teach at Stan State from 2000-2017. 

Kavasch was first a violinist, then composer and soprano. She did her doctoral research around extended vocal techniques, adapting vocalizations of other cultures to push the envelope of musical expression. Her long-standing collaboration with poet Linda Bunney-Sarhad, former Stan State Director of Global Affairs, led to 15 compositions for various combinations of voices and instruments in works ranging from humorous to dramatic, several of which will be featured on the program.   

The evening brings together in music and memory the couple whose vast experience and artistry helped create and shape Stan State’s bachelor of music degree in composition. 

“We would trade off students each semester. I think it was so healthy for them to have exposure to our different styles as we encouraged them to find their own compositional ‘voice’,” Kavasch said. “We were both composers, but I come to it from a background in strings and voice. John’s focus was woodwinds.” 

Their varied focus informs the program’s lineup as well, she noted. “Students and the audience can get some sense of my husband’s and my melodic and harmonic language as it evolved over the years,” she said. 

The Music of Kavasch & Marvin will be Saturday, April 20, 7:30-9:00 p.m. at Snider Recital Hall. The concert is open to the public. Tickets are available at the box office or online.