Concerts by noted regional musicians will be featured during the triennial National Symposium on the History of Music Teaching and Learning, being held this weekend in Chattanooga.
Co-sponsored by the music department of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the symposium brings together musicologists, music education historians and historians of education to discuss the latest research in these fields of study.
Other sponsors are the Library of Congress, the University of Mississippi music department, the Music Educators National Conference and the Tennessee Music Education Association.
The symposium began Thursday with UTC's Monte Coulter performing with the Chattanooga Boys Choir. Tonight, UTC faculty member Roland Carter will conduct the Chattanooga Choral Society for the Preservation of African American Song. The 45-member ensemble places special emphasis on Negro spirituals.
Also tonight, the 8th Regiment Band of Rome, Ga., will perform 19th-century music. The Civil War-era band uses authentic period instruments, music and attire (blue and gray).
On Saturday, David Ivey, who helped organize two recordings for the movie "Cold Mountain," will lead attendees in the traditional sounds of sacred harp music with the Sand Mountain Sacred Harp Singers from Henagar, Ala. This shaped-note singing dates to 18th-century New England.
Charles R. Wilson, professor of Southern studies at the University of Mississippi, will deliver the keynote address on "Southern Musical Culture" at 2 p.m. Saturday.
Wilson holds the Kelly Gene Cook Sr. Chair of History at the university and has written extensively about religion in the South. He is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, which won the Dartmouth Prize from the American Library Association as Best Reference Book of the Year (1989).
All events take place at the Chattanooga Choo Choo, 1400 Market St. The public may attend at no charge.
For more information, visit www.GCSU.edu/srig.
SCHEDULE
Today
n 7:30 p.m. Performances by the Chattanooga Choral Society for the Preservation of African American Song and the 8th Regiment Band (Choo Choo Ballroom)
Saturday
-- 2 p.m. Keynote address by Charles R. Wilson (Choo Choo's Finley Meeting Room)
-- 4 p.m. A "sing with" performance by Sand Mountain (Ala.) Sacred Harp Singers (Choo Choo Ballroom)