San Francisco pianist to perform Webern

San Francisco pianist Janis Mercer will perform works by Austrian composer Anton Webern in concerts Sunday at Eastern Washington University and Monday at Whitworth College.

The program will include works discovered by the late Spokane musicologist Hans Moldenhauer in 1965, 20 years after Webern’s death, as well as Webern’s “Piano Variations” (1936).

Also featured will be the Northwest premiere of a series of brief works collectively known as The Kinderstück Project. Mercer commissioned several professional composers, including Donivan Johnson of Metaline Falls, Wash., to write pieces for children based on Webern’s “Kinderstück (Children’s Piece).”

The program also includes three movements from contemporary German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s “Ein Kinderspiel (Children’s Game).”

Both concerts are at 7:30 p.m., on Sunday in EWU’s Music Recital Hall and on Monday in Whitworth’s Music Recital Hall. Both are free and open to the public, and receptions with Mercer will follow.

She also will be Verne Windham’s featured guest Monday at 10 a.m. on KPBX-FM (91.1, Spokane Public Radio).

Choral evensong at St. John’s

A choral evensong will be presented Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 12th Avenue and Grand Boulevard.

Evensong dates from the early fourth century, when church congregations gathered to thank God for the day just ended and pray for protection through the night ahead.

The Ladies of the Cathedral Choir will sing the traditional Canticles, the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, in paired settings by contemporary composer Roland Martin. The anthem will be “Examine Me, O Lord” by English composer William Boyce.

Billie Severtsen and Janet Satre Ahrend will share the organ.

The public is invited to tour the cathedral between noon and 4 p.m.

Events are free but donations will be accepted. For more information, call 838-4277.