A Memorial Concert for Ronald Perera

NORTHAMPTON, MA — The Smith College Department of Music presents A Memorial Concert for Ronald Perera on Saturday, February 3 at 3 p.m. in Sweeney Concert Hall. Join current music department faculty, faculty emeriti, and guest artists in celebrating the musical legacy of Ronald Perera, Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor (SC 1972–2002). There will also be remembrances given by Donald Wheelock, Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor Emeritus of Music, Reverend Anna Woofenden, Reverend James G. Munroe, and Rosalind Perera. 

Ronald Perera (1941–2023) retired in 2002 after 30 years of teaching at Smith College. Joel Pitchon, Professor of Violin and Chamber Music, remembers Ron as “a perfect colleague; he was knowledgeable, kind, and interested in the work of others.” After his retirement from Smith, Perera remained a presence in the Smith Music Department. “Ron’s collaboration with the Glee Club spanned nearly 50 years.” reflected Director of Orchestral and Choral Activities, Jonathan Hirsh. “I have been privileged to be a part of nearly half of those, premiering many of his compositions.”

While Perera composed music for piano, organ, string quartet, wind instruments, and orchestra, his most characteristic works were those that combined texts with music for voice: songs, choral works, and opera. His repertoire includes operatic masterpieces The Yellow Wallpaper and S., capturing the classics by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and John Updike; and song cycles such as The White Whale (Melville), Crossing the Meridian (Ruth Whitman), Three Poems of Günter Grass, and Apollo Circling (James Dickey). His choral and orchestral compositions drew inspiration from a diverse range of texts by poets such as Sappho, Dickinson, Francis of Assisi, Cummings, Beston, Frost, Longfellow, Ferlinghetti, and Mary Oliver.  Fellow Smith Emeritus of Music Donald Wheelock, compares Perera’s vocal works to an “aural praise” that captures the world’s “miracles, its people, its ironies, its foibles, and its day-to-day epiphanies, in settings of poems which matched his own vision of that world.” 

Published by E.C. Schirmer, Boosey & Hawkes, and his own Pear Tree Press, Perera’s compositions have gained widespread recognition and honor. Perera’s works have appeared regularly on programs throughout New England and beyond at venues including the Washington National Cathedral, the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the yearly convention of Opera America, the Alice Tully and Merkin Halls in NYC, the Manhattan School of Music, and Smith College. Performers of his music have included Coro Allegro, Chatham Chorale, New Amsterdam Singers, the Lontano Ensemble, Eastman Musica Nova, artists from the Chicago Lyric Opera, and Boston Musica Viva, immortalizing his lasting impact on the classical music world.

The concert will feature performances by Smith emeriti Monica Jakuc Leverett and Kenneth Fearn, music department faculty Lemuel Gurtowsky, Joel Pitchon, Volcy Pelletier, Katherine Saik DeLugan, and the Smith College Chamber Singers under the direction of Jonathan Hirsh. Guest artists include Yu-mei Wei, Mary Hubbell, Illuminati Vocal Ensemble, Arianne Abela ‘08, conductor, Da Camera Singers, Sheila Heffernon ‘76, conductor, Clifton J. Noble Jr., and Kaeza Fearn. The event is free and open to the public in Sweeney Concert Hall, 144 Green Street, Northampton and will be streamed live on the Smith College Department of Music YouTube Channel.

At a Glance

Saturday, February 3 at 3 p.m.
A Memorial Concert for Ronald Perera
Sweeney Concert Hall
144 Green Street, Northampton

The Smith College Department of Music presents A Memorial Concert for Ronald Perera on Saturday, February 3 at 3 p.m. in Sweeney Concert Hall. Join current music department faculty, faculty emeriti, and guest artists in celebrating the musical legacy of Ronald Perera, Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor (SC 1972–2002). There will also be remembrances given by Donald Wheelock, Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor Emeritus of Music, Reverend Anna Woofenden, Reverend James G. Munroe, and Rosalind Perera. Free and open to the public. The event will also be streamed live on the Smith College Department of Music YouTube Channel.