BOONE—Composer-in-residence Frank Ticheli will be the guest conductor and flutist Erica Spear is the soloist for an April 20 performance by the Appalachian Wind Ensemble.

The 8 p.m. concert is part of the 2015 Contemporary Music Festival presented by Rho Tau Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. It will be presented in the Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts. The public is invited to attend.

The evening will feature the N.C. premiere of Ticheli’s “Dancing on Water,” inspired by a lifelong friend’s love of sailing. The wind ensemble also will perform Ticheli’s “Nitro,” a three-minute fanfare for band, and “An American Elegy,” composed in memory of those who lost their lives at Columbine High School April 20, 1999.

Ticheli is a professor of composition at University of Southern California. He is the recipient of a 2012 “Arts and Letters Award” from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, his third award from the prestigious organization. His “Symphony No. 2” won the 2006 NBA/William D. Revelli Memorial Band Composition Contest. His other honors include the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize and first prize awards in the Texas Sesquicentennial Orchestral Composition Competition, Britten-on-the-Bay Choral Composition Contest, and Virginia College Band Directors National Association Symposium for New Band Music.

Spear is a winner of the 2015 Appalachian Wind Ensemble concerto competition. She will perform Charles T. Griffes’ “Poem,” a one-movement flute concerto suggestive if Claude Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.”

Spear is an undergraduate at Appalachian pursuing degrees in both music education and flute performance. She has been a finalist in the Hayes School of Music Concerto-Aria Competition and the 2014 Rosen-Schaffel Competition for Young and Emerging Artists. She is a recipient of the North Carolina Teaching Fellow Scholarship and the Appalachian State University Diversity Scholarship. She is the 2014- 2015 Hayes School of Music Carr Whitener Orchestral Scholar.

About Appalachian State University

As a premier public institution, Appalachian State University prepares students to lead purposeful lives. App State is one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina System, with a national reputation for innovative teaching and opening access to a high-quality, cost-effective education. The university enrolls more than 21,000 students, has a low student-to-faculty ratio and offers more than 150 undergraduate and 80 graduate majors at its Boone and Hickory campuses and through App State Online. Learn more at https://www.appstate.edu.