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Brigham
Young University-Idaho organist Darwin Wolford will present his last public
performance as a full-time faculty member Tuesday, Nov. 2, at 7:30 p.m. on the Ruffatti
organ in the Barrus Concert Hall in the Snow
Center for the Performing Arts.
A reception will be held immediately following the recital in the foyer
of the Snow Building.
“We
timed my retirement at Christmas so the Ruffatti
would be completed after a 20-year project to bring it to pass,” he
says.
During
the free recital, Wolford will play some of his favorite works, including
the Passacaglia and Fugue by J.S. Bach, the Second Organ Sonata by Josef Rheinberger, and a half dozen of hymn preludes from the
LDS Hymnbook.
He
also has selected works that use nearly all of the resources of the newly
refurbished Ruffatti organ.
He
graduated from Utah State
University in Logan
in 1960, and he received a master of music degree in 1963 and a Ph.D. in
1967 from the University of Utah
in organ and composition, with a minor in philosophy. He studied organ with
Robert Cundick and Alexander Schreiner and
composition with Le Roy Robertson, John LaMontaine,
and Ned Rorem.
Before
joining the music faculty at Ricks College in 1967, he had served for many
years as a field representative of the General Music Committee. In that
capacity he had taught beginning classes in organ playing and in conducting
in about 200 stakes throughout the West.
He
was instrumental in the acquisition of the four-manual Ruffatti
organ in 1983, as well as the drawing of the specifications of the organ.
He retires at the end of Fall Semester 2004, after renovation of the
original instrument and the installation of the final fifteen ranks of
pipes.
During
his second year of teaching at Ricks
College, a
freshman music major from Missoula, Mont.,
enrolled in two of his classes. At the end of the school year, they were
married in the Logan Temple.
He and his wife, Julie, are the parents of five children, four of whom are
living.
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