The Community Music School at Southwestern College has announced its first Masterclass of 2010.  It will be Saturday, Feb. 13, in the Darbeth Fine Arts Center rehearsal hall.  Baritone-bass singer and conductor Douglas Lawrence is the featured guest. 
          
  The schedule is as follows:
                        • 10-11 a.m.—Lawrence will conduct the Musica! Youth Choir.
                        • 11 a.m.-12—Traditional Masterclass setting with several vocalists having the opportunity to perform and receive critique from Lawrence.
                        • 12-1 p.m.—A question and answer session with Lawrence over lunch.  Lunch is $6 per person.
           
Lawrence sang in Hollywood studios for many years in dozens of movies such as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and supplied singing voices for many of Hollywood’s biggest stars. In television he was involved in nearly 200 network programs over a 20-year span. He also conducted Brian Mann’s rich score for the film “The Theory of Everything” in 2004.
           
His bass-baritone soloist concert career took him around the world several times singing with nearly every major orchestra in the world under the batons of conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Colin Davis, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur, Eugene Ormandy, Seiji Ozawa, and Aaron Copland.
           
For more than 40 years, his influence was also felt as a conductor, visionary, and advisor to the churches of North America and parts of Asia and included major program enhancements at two of the largest Presbyterian churches in the world. He conducted hundreds of choir members in memorable concerts and services while also leading the famed San Francisco Bay Area’s “Schola Cantorum” through the celebration of their 25th anniversary.
           
“This masterclass is a continuation of the Saturday masterclass series provided by the Community Music School,” says Melissa Williamson, administrator of the Community Music School.  “We try to hold at least one masterclass a month and host a different professional musician from the area to share their performance medium with students who are involved in the Community Music School and Southwestern College.” 
           
The masterclass is free and open to the public.  Registration needs to be submitted by Wednesday, Feb. 10.  Registration forms are posted online at www.sckans.edu/cms.  For more information, contact Williamson at (620) 229-6172.