Soprano Lynda Keith Mcknight in Faculty Recital Feb. 17

by Richard Veit

Soprano Lynda Keith McKnight, assistant professor of vocal studies at Baylor University, will present a faculty recital at 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 17, in Roxy Grove Hall. She will be accompanied by Roger Keyes, professor of piano.
The program will open with two songs by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, followed by a Mendelssohn set of five pieces-four by Felix Mendelssohn and one by his sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. The four songs by Arnold Schoenberg that McKnight will sing date from the last two years of the 19th century, before the composer adopted his more severe, 12-tone style.
After intermission, McKnight will sing five songs by Claude Debussy. The recital will conclude with a performance of an early work by contemporary American composer Ned Rorem, his "Cycle of Holy Songs" from 1955. This song cycle is actually a setting of four Psalms from the Old Testament.
McKnight has been a member of the Baylor music faculty since 1993. She holds degrees from Baylor and the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. She first received national attention in 1988 when she was one of the national winners of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1992, singing in the world premiere of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles.
Roger Keyes, who has served on the Baylor keyboard faculty since 1965, holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Indiana. He was honored by Baylor in 1987 as its Outstanding Tenured Professor, and the Texas Music Teachers Association named him its College Teacher of the Year in 1988. Keyes appears throughout the Southwest as pianist, competition judge, master teacher and workshop clinician.
The recital is free and open to the public. For more information, you may call the Baylor School of Music at 755-3991.