MC Professor Viola Dacus Sings with Mississippi Symphony Orchestra

Viola Dacus

Mezzo-soprano Viola Dacus performs with the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra in a March 11 concert featuring some of metro Jackson’s finest singers and composers.

Dacus, an instructor of voice at Mississippi College, will be joined by retired MC music professor and award-winning composer James Sclater and other artists as part of an MSO chamber program dubbed “Tales from the Road.”

The concert is set for that Friday evening at 7:30 p.m. at Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church in Jackson. Tickets are $15 and $5 for students.

Dacus will perform a new song cycle entitled “Reflections in the Mirror of Childhood.”

An MC music professor for 40 years before retiring last spring, Sclater composed the songs for Dacus and wrote the text. The pieces “are based on recollections from my youth in rural Yazoo County, Mississippi,” Dacus says.

The evening of travelers’ songs include Gustav Mahler’s “Songs of a Wayfarer” and music based on the poetry of C.S. Lewis. Igor Stravinsky’s vibrant and popular “Pulcinella” closes the evening.

Dacus and Sclater, who both live in Clinton, will be joined at the Jackson concert by baritone James Martin and Jackson composer Andrew Sauerwein, who penned  the song “Landings” for the program.

As the largest professional performing arts group in the Magnolia State, the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra performs for more than 75,000 Mississippians each year at more than 120 concerts statewide.

For more information on the concert, contact MSO offices in Jackson at 601.960.1565.