DEPAUW NEWS ARCHIVE

Balensuela Presents Lecture And Recital On American Composer, Carrie Jacobs Bond
                      
    Women's Week guest artist Peggy Balensuela, mezzo-soprano, will present a recital and lecture on American composer Carrie Jacobs Bond at DePauw University on Monday, March 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center, Thompson Recital Hall . The event is free and open to the public.

     Bond (1862 - 1946) lived through enormous changes in American popular culture, and made an important contribution to it by composing and performing sentimental music during the Gilded Age. She developed her talent in time stolen from making a living running a Chicago boarding house and doing several other odd jobs to make ends meet.

     Her 1901 self-publication of "Seven Songs as Unpretentious as the Wild Rose" was enormously popular, and led her to start her own music store and publishing house, and eventually to perform in the White House, New York City and Europe (with Caruso). One of her songs, "(The End of) A Perfect Day," sold five million copies in sheet music, plus lots of recordings. So, of course, in 1910 she moved to Hollywood, where she lived until the end of her life, as newer styles of entertainment supplanted hers.

     Balensuela is associate professor of voice at Indiana State University. She trained at Indiana University and has won fellowships to the Aspen Music Festival and the Back Aria Festival/Stony Brook. Recent solo engagements include performance of Samuel Adler¹s Symphony No. 5 "We Are the Echoes," with the Louisville Orchestra, and performance of Brahms' Alto Rhapsody with the Amarillo Symphony. She regularly appears with regional orchestras around the country as a soloist in works such as Handel's Messiah, Verdi's Requiem, Mozart's Requiem, and other standards in oratorio repertoire.

For up-to-date information about music events in the Performing Arts Center, visit the School of Music calendar or call (765) 658-4379.