Color and Light

White Concert Hall, Washburn University

Saturday, September 27, 2025
7:30 PM

WE PRESENT STORIES of light, color, and hope in this concert featuring works by two Kansas composers. Gordon McQuere invites us to contemplate kindness, perseverance, and wisdom in his optimistic and colorful Three Essays, and Alyssa Morris’s Color and Light (Tlapalli Tlahuilli) takes inspiration from the book “Musicians of the Sun” which details the Aztec myth of how the world received its color and light. We then present Brahms’s delightful Haydn Variations, a perennial symphonic favorite that shows off Brahms’s musical genius as he inventively riffs on a simple chorale, transforming it into a virtuosic showpiece for the orchestra.

Gordon McQuere – Three Essays

Alyssa Morris – Tlapalli Tlahuilli

Brahms – Haydn Variations