For two hours on the afternoon of Friday, April 25, musicians will perform pop-up “concerts” throughout the campus of Rowan University. By “Earth Busking,” these instrumentalists will temporarily reshape the aural environment of their surroundings. The purpose of this project is to raise awareness and money for sustainability initiatives on campus and in the community.

2025 donations will go to support Rowan University’s glass recycling initiative. Read more about the project here, and consider joining us on Sunday, April 27th when the Rowan University Wind Ensemble performs Alex DeStefano’s Our Glass, a new work inspired by glass making and recycling in Glassboro, NJ.

We are also busking in solidarity with Rowan’s Arboretum and Smell Studio, whose students will be planting native aromatics. Get outside and enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of our beautiful campus environment.

We are thrilled to be joined by two renowned artists, composers Majel Connery and Anthony Plog, to discuss their experiences creating music inspired by the natural world. Connery’s The Rivers are our Brothers will be performed on Saturday, April 26th by GRAMMY-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer; and Plog’s God’s First Temples will be premiered by the Rowan University Wind Ensemble on Sunday, April 27th. All are welcome to this free, open conversation! For reservations, please visit the Rowan University Box Office.

Guest Artist biographies:

Majel Connery is a composer, vocalist and roving musicologist combining the beauty of Classical music with the power of modern technology. Her voice has been called "superb" by the New York Times and her compositions "thoroughly Schubertian" by the Wall Street Journal. Connery’s environmental compositions have been performed around the world, including her own recent premiere of Elderflora at Seattle Symphony/Octave 9, and the 2023-24 tour of “The Rivers are our Brothers” by Grammy-winning choir Chanticleer. An educator working at the intersection of arts and scholarship, Connery has created incubator classrooms and productions with artists like Caroline Shaw and Ken Ueno on campuses like Stanford, UC Berkeley, Wellesley, and Princeton. In radio, Connery hosts the NPR/CapRadio podcast A Music of Their Own and Reverberations with New Amsterdam Records. She holds a PhD in musicology from the University of Chicago and an A.B. in music from Princeton.

Anthony Plog has had a rich and varied international career in music—as a composer of operas, symphonic music, and chamber works; as an orchestral musician, soloist, and recording artist; and as a brass teacher and coach at some of the great music conservatories internationally and now online to students around the world. His works have been performed in over 30 countries, and he has been the recipient of numerous grants and commissions. After beginning his career writing extensively for brass, he now works in many different musical forms. He has composed three children’s operas, the first of which (How the Trumpet Got Its Toot) was premiered by the Utah Opera and Symphony. Plog completed a major tragic opera (Spirits) based on a Holocaust theme and recently finished a new opera about a drone operator suffering a nervous breakdown (The Sacrifice). Other new works include an oratorio about the first major environmental battle in the United States (God’s First Temples), and a cantata using the stories of women who have recovered from sex trafficking, prostitution, and drug abuse (Magdalene). Hear Plog in deep conversation with other professional musicians by listening to his podcast, Anthony Plog On Music.

TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, PLEASE RESERVE A FREE TICKET BY VISITING THE BOX OFFICE WEBSITE: CLICK HERE

Join us for an unforgettable outdoor “concert” honoring Earth Day (4/22/25) and Arbor Day (4/25/25). Attendees will be guided along a nature trail on Rowan University’s campus as musicians perform live from various points on the path. This event features Rowan University Department of Music faculty and student artists.

Attendees should meet at the large owl statue on Meditation Walk (near Science/Savitz Halls), which is where the guided tour will begin. The event is free. Note: The Nature Walk Concert may be canceled in the case of heavy rain. Please check this site on the day of the performance for updated information regarding weather.

CONCERT PROGRAM: TBD

This event is produced by the Marie Rader Presenting Series and features the Rowan University Concert Choir (Dr. Christopher Thomas, conductor).

The GRAMMY® Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer is known around the world as “an orchestra of voices” for its dazzling virtuosity and wide-ranging repertoire rooted in the renaissance, with continued expansion to include a wide range of classical, gospel, jazz, popular music, and a deep commitment to the commissioning of new compositions and arrangements. 

The Marie Rader Series is proud to present Chanticleer’s Music of a Silent World program, in which the ensemble sings the songs of the natural world and gives a voice to the otherwise voiceless rocks and stones and trees and rivers that share our planet with us. The program centers around a new arrangement of Majel Connery's The Rivers are our Brothers. “The goal,” she says, “is to give nature a voice. I wanted to allow these vibrant things to speak on their own behalf.”

While inhabiting those voices, the program also explores what the world might be like without them. Repertoire includes music by William Byrd, Heinrich Isaac, and Robert Schumann, new arrangements of “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty and “The Weather” by Lawrence, and a new commission from Chanticleer’s composer in residence, Ayanna Woods.

TICKETS AND CONCERT DETAILS AVAILABLE AT BOX OFFICE WEBSITE

About the Marie Rader Presenting Series:

The Marie Rader Presenting Series (MRPS) at Rowan University is a curated performing arts series that uplifts the region's cultural landscape. Focused on community engagement, artistic integrity, and inclusion, MRPS provides public offerings that reflect the innovation and quality consistent with Rowan's overall standards of high achievement and transformation, while providing unprecedented access for youth, families, and seniors. 

Because of the Marie Rader Series, you don't have to travel to New York or Philadelphia to see some of the most influential leaders in dance, music, theatre and beyond. This series is also designed to introduce you to artists you wouldn't otherwise encounter-- artists who reflect not only the future of performing arts, but who help us envision a better world, right now, right here in South Jersey.

The Marie Rader is made possible in part through generous support from the Henry M. Rowan Family Foundation via the Marie Rader Memorial Fund and through funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

In their final performance of the season, the Rowan University Wind Ensemble explores the history and future of environmental conservation in the United States. The concert features the world premiere of Anthony Plog’s song cycle for soprano and band, God’s First Temples; inspired by the book Guardians of the Valley by Dean King, this new work sets the words of legendary outdoorsman and conservationist John Muir as he advocates passionately for the preservation of Yosemite National Park. The concert also features premieres of Gala Flagello’s beautiful three-movement Love & Nature and student composer Alexander DeStefano’s Our Glass, inspired by glassmaking and glass recycling in Glassboro, NJ.

TICKETS AND CONCERT DETAILS AVAILABLE AT BOX OFFICE

Program:

Gala Flagello – Love & Nature (Consortium Premiere)

Alexander DeStefano – Our Glass (World Premiere)

Buck McDaniel – So Love was Crowned, but Music Won the Cause

featuring Matthew Drinkard, concerto competition winner

— Intermission —

Helen May Butler – Cosmopolitan America

Charles Ives – The Alcotts

Anthony Plog – God’s First Temples (World Premiere)

Viet Cuong – Deciduous