Stone Fort to host second pop-up event featuring SFA's Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble

SFA's Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble will perform a pop-up concert from 1 to 2 p.m. Friday, May 5, outside the Stone Fort on the SFA campus. The concert is part of the museum's Inside-Out outreach program that hopes to bring more visitors to the museum and stoke interest in Texas and Nacogdoches history.

NACOGDOCHES, Texas - The Stone Fort will host a pop-up concert featuring the Stephen F. Austin State University Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble from 1 to 2 p.m. Friday, May 5, at the Stone Fort, located on the SFA campus.

The concert is the second in a series of pop-up events and part of the Stone Fort Museum's Inside-Out project, an outreach program designed to pique interest in the museum's exhibits and encourage students and community members to come inside.

"For decades, there's been a myth circulating among SFA students that if they come inside the Stone Fort they will not graduate, which is entirely untrue," Carolyn Spears, curator of the Stone Fort Museum, said. "Hosting the Inside-Out events is a way to attract members of the SFA and Nacogdoches communities to come to events outside the Stone Fort and then encourage them to step inside and continue to experience local and Texas history through the impressive exhibits."

The Stone Fort's current exhibit is "El Camino Real de los Tejas & Building Nacogdoches: 1716-2016." The exhibit documents the history of the Camino Real and focuses on the people who lived and traveled the road.

Objects on loan for the exhibit include flintlocks, flint knives, cruciform stirrups, belt knives, and tools for traveling and carpentry from the private collections of Rick Still and George Avery, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and the SFA Anthropology Lab.

"Upstairs, we have a panel highlighting Music in the Borderlands that features common musical instruments, including a mandolin and part of a mouth harp recovered from the Mission Dolores de los Ais archeological site," Spears said. "The Pop-Up on Friday will feature scanned sheet music from the period and an amberola, which is an early type of phonograph that used wax cylinders."

The event will feature SFA's Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble performing selections from Igor Stravinsky's "The Firebird Suite" and Paul Hindemith's "Symphonic Metamorphosis." Additionally, "Canzona Prima," "The Yellow Rose of Texas," and "Desperado," will be performed. Fitting for the occasion, the ensemble also will perform "Nine Flags of Nacogdoches," written by Kelley Wittington of Nacogdoches. The ensemble is led by Dr. J.D. Salas, associate professor of music at SFA.

"When people think of a group of tubas playing together, thoughts of massed pachyderms may immediately spring to mind," Salas said. "However, the euphonium, which is similar to a tuba but about half the size, has a higher and lighter sound and performs most of the melodies. Together, the two instruments create an ensemble that possesses remarkably sonorous timbre and a wide dynamic range."

The majority of the ensemble will perform in front of the Stone Fort at ground level; however, 12 members of the ensemble will perform on the Stone Fort's second-floor porch.

The concert is free and open to the public. For more information about the Stone Fort, its exhibits or the Inside-Out series, contact Spears at cspears@sfasu.edu.