Triangle Now Spotlight: UNCG Collage Concert

Melodic Mosaic
UNCG brings its multifaceted orchestral concert to Raleigh

by Jessie Ammons
photograph courtesy UNCG

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro is celebrating its 125th anniversary, and as part of a year-long effort to commemorate the milestone, it’s taking Collage, an ever-popular annual musical concert, on the road for the first time. The free concert will take place in Raleigh at Meymandi Concert Hall Sept. 16.

Collage is, well, a collage: of the different schools of music that we have at UNCG,” says Hana Zevgolis, a Raleigh native and rising senior voice major at UNC Greensboro. Zevgolis will perform alongside some 300 of her peers in what she calls “a showcase of what our college is about.”

Students and faculty members from every department of UNCG’s College of Visual and Performing Arts – including music, dance, and voice – combine talents for a dynamic, rapid-fire show that occurs without breaks. A choir performance will take place under the colored spotlight in one area, and then, the moment it finishes, a jazz ensemble will pick up in another. Then African drums will echo from the back. Then an opera aria from the front. Then a classical string number from an opposite corner. “It’s really immersive, and it runs continuously, seamlessly, without pause in between each very short performance,” says the concert’s co-director, Kevin Geraldi, who is also the school’s director of orchestral activities. “Collage is an incredibly unique concert experience.”

For Zevgolis, it’s a chance to share her hard work and talents with her hometown. “Greensboro is only about an hour away, but growing up … I never heard much about it. I’m glad people will get to see a little bit more of UNCG.”

Geraldi says the concert is free to the public as a way for the university to give back to the community, as it plans to do throughout its quasquicentennial year. “We want to gift the performance to the community as a way of representing UNCG in Raleigh … It’s a sampler of all the different musical possibilities.”

Advance registration required; vpa.uncg.edu/collage