This Saturday marks the big game during the day, the victory party for the Cyclones afterwards and the Music Department recital at 7:30 p.m. Music recital??? Well, listen up for some ear-enticing tunage coming up.

The Music Department at Iowa State University invites the public to attend a faculty recital to be given by soprano Janet Alcorn, tenor Donald Simonson, pianist William David and dancer Valerie Williams in a program of American song, poetry and dance. The performance will occur Saturday, Sept. 16 at 7:30 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the Music Building.

The program will include the music of American composers Samuel Barber, Theodore Chanler, Aaron Copland and Richard Hundley.

Janet Alcorn, a soprano and a member of the voice faculty, also directs the department’s Lyric Theatre workshop. Her opera performances have received critical acclaim throughout the U.S., Germany and the Philippines.

Simonson chairs the opera, concert and recital groups on campus and has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, Musical Heritage and CBS.

David is the pianist of the Ames Piano Quartet, ISU’s acclaimed resident chamber music ensemble. Hailed by TASS as “. . . a total musician,” David regularly performs throughout the world and can be heard on recordings from Musical Heritage and Dorian.

Williams is a dancer and choreographer and is founder and director of Co’Motion Dance Theatre, Iowa’s professional modern dance company.

She is recognized nationally for her choreography and dance and is in constant demand as a dance educator and performer. Recent activities have included such diverse assignments as choreographing opera/ballet in Europe and choreography for The Iowa State Fair Singers.

The program will begin with Chanler’s “Eight Epitaphs.” These short pieces are settings of fictional epitaphs taken from the story Benighted in Walter de la Mare’s Ding Dong Bell.

Samuel Barber’s “Three Songs Op. 45” represents the composer’s last efforts for voice. Written originally for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, they date from 1972 and are set to translations of German and Polish texts.

Richard Hundley, described by one critic as an American Poulenc, says his main interest in song composition is to make the emotion become a full idea contained in the poem he is setting. This approach is represented in his Four Songs.

The program will close with Aaron Copland’s Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson. Copland consciously worked to compose music to place Emily Dickinson and her poems. . . in the forefront,” with the final product a cycle of songs conveying the openness and grave simplicity of Dickinson’s vision.

So make your Saturday night plans for a short musical trip through a recital that will leave you breathless. This concert is part of the Faculty Recital Series and is free and open to the public.