Michael Vercelli, director of WVU’s World Music and Performance Center, will present a lecture-performance titled “Searching for Orifa: The Birifor Xylopone Music of Ghana,” Tuesday, March 10, at the Creative Arts Center.

The event begins at 5 p.m. in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (200A) and is free and open to the public.

Dr. Vercelli was presented with this year’s Snowshoe Institute Award of Excellence for Scholarship in the Arts by the College of Creative Arts. The award is for outstanding faculty members in the college and celebrates their current scholarship activity from the most recent two academic years. The purpose of the award is to provide greater visibility to faculty scholars in the College of Creative Arts.

Vercelli received the Snowshoe Institute Award for his work with the Birifor funeral music of Ghana. This project began with a WVU Faculty Senate Research grant that brought master Birifor musician Tijan Dorwana to the WVU campus for a ten-week residency. Vercelli worked with Dorwana to record the entire Birifor funeral sequence, using authentic Birifor xylophones and the best audio recording possible to create the first studio recording and the first recording of the entire Birifor funeral repertoire.

The results of this project have included the release of a double CD titled “Searching for Orifa” in 2013, national and international performances, and conference presentations. The project has also been reviewed in “Percussive Notes,” the international journal of the Percussive Arts Society.

Vercelli’s engaging ethnographic presentation is accessible to wide audiences. Using the CD audio, video examples from Ghana, and personal performance, his presentation will demonstrate the functionality of this music within its traditional context.

Vercelli holds a doctorate in Percussion Performance with a minor in Ethnomusicology from the University of Arizona.

While well versed in the classical percussion repertoire, his specialty lies in non-Western instruments. He has studied the traditional music of other countries and done fieldwork in Bali, Cuba, Brazil, and primarily, Ghana.

He has received many awards for both his performance and study of indigenous music such as being named a Fulbright Alternate and recipient of numerous grants including the prestigious Northern Trust/ Piper Enrichment Scholarship, which enabled him to spend seven months in West Africa researching his dissertation project on Ghanaian xylophone.

For more information about the lecture, please contact the College of Creative Arts at 304-293-4359.

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CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

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