FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 22, 2005

CONTACT: Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119, lisa.lacher@drake.edu

DRAKE CHOIRS, ORCHESTRA TO PERFORM HAYDN'S "CREATION MASS"

All four Drake University choral ensembles and an orchestra made up of Drake students and faculty members will perform Haydn's "Schöpfungsmesse," also known as "Creation Mass," at 8 p.m. Thursday, May 5, at the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines, 221 Walnut St. Aimee Beckmann-Collier, professor of conducting at Drake, will conduct the performance, which will involve nearly 275 musicians.

The concert will be preceded by a presentation about Haydn and his "Creation Mass" given by Eric Saylor, Drake's musicologist, at 7 p.m. in the lobby of the Civic Center.
Saylor's presentation will be the inaugural event in the James Cox Memorial Lecture Series, which has been established by the Drake chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, a national professional music fraternity, in memory Cox, associate professor of music and head of the music education area at Drake. He died of a heart attack at age 49 in 1997.

The inaugural lecture in the series has been titled the James Bennett Distinguished Lecture in memory of Bennett, a staunch supporter of Drake's music program and husband of Virginia Bennett, associate professor of music education and head of music education at Drake. Both Cox and James Bennett were members of the Drake chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.

Tickets for the concert are $15 for the general public and $7 for students. They are available at the Drake Fine Arts Box Office at (515) 271-3841 and at the Civic Center Box Office at (515) 243-1888 and at Ticketmaster. For more information, call (515) 271-3841.

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