By Carl Hoover

Tribune-Herald entertainment editor

Belgium audiences next week will get a two-fer of American music when they listen to the works of Baylor University associate professor of composition Scott McAllister, who builds his concertos and ensemble pieces on themes from American rock bands Nirvana, Alice in Chains and the Allman Brothers (and Led Zeppelin, but they’re English).

They’ll get a blitz of Baylor as well, as McAllister and 23 of his School of Music colleagues will perform 21 concerts and recitals, teach 78 workshops and master classes and present 12 lectures in 16 cities during the two-week “Baylor in Belgium: An American Music Festival.”

The event reciprocates the “Flemish Fortnight” emphasis that Baylor hosted in the fall of 2006, but Music School Dean Will May said planning on the Belgium end of things mushroomed over time. “As institutions became interested in the project, it kinda grew into the proportions it has,” he said.

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"Baylor in Belgium," Sunday Sounds, Waco Symphony Association

Performance: 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Waco Civic Theatre, 1517 Lake Air Drive.

Tickets: $10.

The works of Baylor University associate professor of composition Scott McAllister are to be performed during a trip by Baylor musicians to Belgium. (Ben Johansen photo)

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The two-week emphasis represents an important step for the Baylor School of Music as it expands its name recognition into Europe. By visiting with their Belgian counterparts and performing in concert, Baylor music professors hope to buff their program’s reputation for quality; that, in turn, will aid future student recruitment as music instructors can share their personal experiences with Baylor musicians with students.

“Particularly for musicians, a trust factor needs to be built,” said May, who said the Baylor school was also exploring inroads to Hungary and Italy in addition to the large-scale Belgium project.

May is one of the few Baylor administrators and teachers who will be in Belgium the full two weeks; groups and individuals will shuttle in and out of northern Belgium to teach and play.

The International Contemporary Music Festival hosted by Belgium’s Royal Music Conservatory takes place next week in Ghent and will contain many of the recitals and concerts that Baylor faculty members will give. Week two is more oriented toward teaching classes and workshops at Belgium conservatories, arts academies and schools.

It’s an ambitious project, whose organization and logistics have taken several years to work out. “Something this massive could not have taken place without the Internet,” May said.

In Baylor’s time in Belgium, conductor Loyd Hawthorne will lead the Belgium National Radio Choir, while Stephen Heyde and Eric Wilson will head public concerts in Brussels and Antwerp, featuring Baylor soloists Deborah Williamson, Wiff Rudd, Brent Phillips and Krassimira Jordan.

Baylor music faculty members have kept busy in recent weeks, using local recitals and concerts to polish their performances before repeating them abroad. McAllister, a clarinetist, and his wife, pianist Lesley Sisterhen McAllister, recently performed works they’ll play in Belgium, while other woodwind players will present the Waco Symphony Association’s Sunday Sounds concert “Baylor in Belgium” at 3:30 p.m. Sunday at the Waco Civic Theatre.

McAllister, commissioned two years ago to write an oboe and bassoon concerto for the Waco Symphony Orchestra, said the Belgium organizers requested many of the works that he and his Baylor colleagues will perform.

“They’re very hungry for anything American-sounding,” he said.

American audiences are also hungry for new McAllister pieces, and the Waco composer has attended four premieres of his works over the last three months.

He’s doubly flattered, he said, by Belgian interest in his writing and by colleagues who will be bringing his compositions to life. In assembling the works that he and his Baylor faculty members will play next week, McAllister experienced the arc of his writing.

“They’ll play 15 years of my work all in one week,” McAllister said. “It’s kind of like a reunion in a way.”

choover@wacotrib.com

757-5749