World premiere will celebrate 30 years for all-women’s choir

by KIA MUHAMMAD

A prolific Germantown composer has written a piece of music that will have its world premiere Saturday, May 14, at World Café Live in University City. It was written in honor of the 30th anniversary of the all-female Anna Crusis Choir and its director, Jane Hulting, who is leaving after 20 years at the helm.

The composer, Lisa Westerterp, 43, a native of the Netherlands, has been actively playing and contributing works to various ensembles in Philadelphia and New York for the last 15 years. She has performed her own works (more than 20) at the Fringe Festival, the “New Music Across America” Festival and at the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors concert series. She also provides music therapy to retarded children and adults at Woodhaven Center in Northeast Philadelphia. Her compositions are rooted in jazz, contemporary, classical and world music.

Westerterp moved to Philadelphia 20 years ago from New York. (“New York became too expensive, and this was the closest big city that had a lot of jazz clubs.”) She later studied music at Temple University. Lisa says her compositions are inspired by nature but that the piece she wrote for this weekend’s concert, called “She Sweeps with Many Colored Brooms,” was inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem.

“The piece has special meaning,” she said, “because the poem discusses a housewife who sweeps the sky, and while sweeping, she leaves many colors behind her. It was very difficult to write because of the process of layering different voices for the choir and figuring out how the saxophones and voices would sound together.”

In 1991 Lisa performed her compositions “Rain Season” and “Halfway to Nowhere” at the Painted Bride Art Center with a quartet of saxophonists, “3X-Y.” Most of the music they play consists of their own original works, and all four members of the group contribute to the compositions. They also play original arrangements of jazz tunes by Grover Washington, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and others. In addition to Lisa Westerterp, the other members are: Kathleen Mitchell, who holds a master’s degree in saxophone perfoprmance from Northwestern University and has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, among others; Nicole Pacifico, a graduate of the University of the Arts with degrees in saxophone performance and music education. She was the recipient of the Michael Brecker Saxophone Award given by the School of Music in 1996 and received a stipend from the Philadelphia Music Alliance in 1994. She currently performs with many ensembles in the region; William Wenglicki, music director at Northeast High School, who holds a music education degree from Temple University. He has been a member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Broadway Show Orchestra and several others and has his own band, “Blivy.”

In 1992 Lisa was the winner of the Independent Artist Performance Grant, awarded by the Philadelphia Community Education Center. She wrote a new piece for the occasion entitled “Embrace the Daybreak,” which was performed by the saxophone quartet at the Community Education Center of Philadelphia. She also had to do community work for this grant, and she chose to work with the University City High School jazz band, which performed two of Westerterp’s compositions at a school concert.

As recently at 2000, Lisa was selected to play her composition, “Canto de Luna,” with 3X-Y at the Fringe Festival of Philadelphia as a part of the Fresh Ears Composers series. When not working on her music, Lisa volunteers at Awbury Arboretum in Germantown, rides her bike and enjoys art, poetry and visiting museums.

This Saturday’s concerts will be performed at World Cafe Live, 3101 Chestnut St. For more information, call 215-222-1400.