The University of Rhode Island Department of Music will celebrate the musical heritage of the state with "Rhode Island Music Through the Years: Short Stories by URI Authors," on Sunday, Oct. 21, at 3 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center Recital Hall on the Kingston campus.

URI Music Professor Carolyn Livingston and Dawn Elizabeth Smith, instrumental music director at Westerly High School, will narrate as they and former music graduate students present a multi-media event depicting people, organizations, and events in the state’s distant and recent past.

The presentations are based on chapters from the book "Rhode Island’s Musical Heritage: An Exploration," co-edited by Livingston and Smith. The book will be published next year by Harmonie Park Press in Michigan.

When the project began in 1992, Livingston had no idea it would expand as it has. She began assigning the students enrolled in her "research in music" graduate course the task of writing about a musical topic set in Rhode Island. Students could choose from a list of possibilities or find their own research focus.

"I had no thought that we’d end up with nearly 60 papers, because I believed then that all the good ideas would be used up in a couple of years," she says. Instead, each time the course is taught (once every three semesters), students and colleagues come up with more topics to go on the suggestion list. Students continue to write about original subjects off the list as well.

"What makes the project so exciting," Livingston remarks, "is that students are often extremely creative in finding new, interesting subjects and that several of them have become the first person to research their topic in any depth." Papers collected over the years will eventually be housed in the URI Library, providing a valuable resource for future researchers.

Livingston, with a master’s degree and PhD from the University of Florida, has been engaged in music research for about 25 years. In addition to teaching, she writes articles and reviews for scholarly journals, serves on two national editorial committees, and is the author of an earlier book, "Charles Faulkner Bryan: His Life and Music." She and her husband Burton Zitkin live in Cranston.

Smith, a Westerly native and lifetime resident, is not only a music teacher but also an emergency medical technician with the Westerly Ambulance Corps. A 1990 graduate of URI, she received her master’s degree from Connecticut College. She was named a "Woman of Achievement" by the Napatree Business and Professional Women’s Club in 2006.

FIRST CONCERTS OF THE SEASON

Concerts by the URI Concert Band and the URI Symphony Orchestra will precede Sunday’s multi-media tribute to Rhode Island music.

The Concert Band, directed by Brian Cardany, will perform Friday, Oct. 19, at 8 p.m. The program will feature works by three modern composers, although the selections themselves range from a suite of Renaissance dances to a set of variations appropriate for the Halloween season, commemorating famous ghosts and other spectral occurrences.

The URI Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Ann Danis, will perform on Saturday, Oct. 20, also at 8 p.m. The program for their first concert of the season includes "Festival March" from Puccini’s "La Boheme" (the opera on which the modern musical "Rent" is based), "Buckaroo Holiday" from Aaron Copland’s "Rodeo," Grundman’s "Two Sketches for Orchestra" (rare pieces among his work since he wrote mostly for wind ensembles), "Leroy Anderson Favorites" arranged by Calvin Custer, and "Berceuse" and "Finale" from Stravinsky’s "Firebird Suite."