Fourth of July Carillon Concert
An old fashioned carillon concert will be held at the Old Chapel featuring Dr. Lucy Dechene as carillonneur. The concert is free and open to the public. Those attending are encouraged to bring blankets or folding lawn chairs to and sit on the lawns or stroll the grounds of the university around the campus pond while enjoying the concert.
The concert will be performed on the Old Chapel’s Henry Vincent Couper Memorial Carillon. The carillon, a forty two bell, three and one half octave instrument cast by the Royal Eijsbouts Bell Foundry of Asten in the Netherlands was installed in the Old Chapel (the original library) at the UMass Amherst Campus. Dedicated in 1999. The carillon was augmented by the installation thirty additional bells bringing it up to its full complement of 42 bells in 2004. The carillon is the gift of the Henry Vincent Couper Foundation. Vin Couper graduated from Massachusetts State College (now UMass Amherst) in 1938.
This will be the third concert of the summer series following the Commencement and Reunion academic concerts and will be the first annual Forth of July Concert kicking off a summer series of concerts for the enjoyment of the University Community. The concert will consist of a collection of classical, popular and patriotic music appropriate for the celebration of an Amherst Forth of July weekend.
Dr. Lucy Dechene is a professor of mathematics at Fitchburg State College and visiting carillonneur at Norwood Town Hall in Massachusetts. She studied carillon with Lowell Smith, an Honors graduate of the Dutch Carillon School, and Patti Ouimette at the University of California, Riverside, while working on her Ph.D. in mathematics from 1973-78. She passed her national carillon exam in 1977 at the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America Congress at the University of Chicago and was unanimously elected a Carillonneur Member, the American equivalent of a diploma from a European Carillon School. She has given many carillon recitals throughout North America and Europe since then, including recitals on all the carillons of Scotland and Ireland, most of those in England and Canada, at the Tiergarten in Berlin, Germany, Copenhagen, and the Danish Carillon School in Logumkloster, Denmark. She is a member of the British-Irish Carillon Society and an honorary member of the Swiss Guild of Carillonneurs.
Dr. Dechene is also an organist, choir director, and composer. She double-majored in organ performance and mathematics as an undergraduate at the University of San Francisco. She studied organ under Dr. Wyatt Insko of San Francisco Conservatory of Music and music composition under Dr. Mack Crooks of Lone Mt. College from 1969-1973.
Some of her works for carillon, organ, woodwind ensemble, chorus and symphony orchestra have been performed in Europe, California, New England, and New York. In 1996 she was commissioned by Fitchburg State College to write a march for the Centennial Graduation of the school. The Centennial March has been played as the recessional for the FSC graduation ceremony ever since.