Jack Gallagher Work to be Performed at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music

“A Psalm of Life” will be presented Feb. 4 by Cincinnati College-Conservatory Wind Ensemble

WOOSTER, Ohio — "A Psalm of Life," a work by Jack Gallagher, the Olive Williams Kettering Professor of Music at The College of Wooster, will be performed on Friday, Feb. 4, at 8 p.m. by the Cincinnati College-Conservatory Wind Ensemble, conducted by Terrence Milligan. The performance, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Corbett Auditorium on the CCM campus.

Commissioned by the Kettering (Ohio) Fairmont High School Band Boosters Association, "A Psalm of Life" takes its title from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The work, newly revised for this performance, was commissioned in memory of Charles Craig, a 1986 graduate and music education major at The College of Wooster who served as Director of Bands at Kettering Fairmont from 1994 until his tragic death in 1997 in an automobile accident. At Wooster, Craig studied trumpet with Gallagher and performed in premieres of two Gallagher works.

“A Psalm of Life” is the most recent of seven compositions by Gallagher performed at The Cincinnati College-Conservatory since 2001. Others have included “The Persistence of Memory” by the Conservatory Wind Symphony; “Diversions Triptych,” “Stanfare,” and “Proteus Rising from the Sea,” performed by the Symphony Band; and ”Remembrance of Robin,” commissioned and premiered by Robert Sullivan, Principal Trumpet of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Gallagher, who teaches composition, orchestration, music theory, and counterpoint, has been a member of The College of Wooster faculty since 1977. The composer of more than 45 works for orchestra, chorus, symphonic band, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments, his recent CD of orchestral music, recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta, was published internationally last fall on the Naxos label. It has been broadcast by more than 100 classical music radio stations in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.