Dr. Lynn Worcester Jones
photo by Basil Considine
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga welcomed its newest music professor on Friday night. More than two hundred people crowded into Cadek Recital Hall to hear the debut faculty recital of Dr. Lynn Worcester Jones, who joined the music faculty this August.
Dr. Worcester Jones presented a program of piano pieces by Ginastera, Glass, Liszt, and Mozart, plus a piano rhapsody by UTC’s own Prof. Jonathan McNair.
There was a tangible buzz in the hall as the crowd gathered before the performance. Some had come as far as Georgia, and before long the ushers ran out of programs due to the size of the crowd. Dr. Worcester Jones began the program with Mozart’s Piano Sonata in F Major, K. 332, a piece that begins with a deceptively light and playful text before diving into rapid passages and mood shifts in the final movement. Next came the sweeping gestures of Liszt’s program piece Vallée d’Obermann, S. 160, a suite capturing glimpses of Switzerland and the exploration of nature.
Dr. Worcester Jones joins UTC after teaching stints at the University of Northern Iowa and Shorter University in Georgia. Following the intermission, she performed Ginastera’s fiendishly difficult Piano Sonata No. 1 and Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis One. The performance closed with Jonathan McNair’s Rhapsody (2002).