A composition by Shepherd University faculty member Dr. Mark Andrew Cook will premiere at Italy’s Alba Music Festival through June3.

Titled “Sonata for Trumpet,” the work will be performed by Shepherd alumnus Nicholas Corasaniti. Cook, associate professor of music and director for music theory and composition, will travel to the festival to attend the premiere.

A graduate of the Peabody Conservatory in 1978 with a degree in music education, Cook came to Shepherd in 2005. He graduated from Catholic University with a master’s degree in music theory in 1990 and doctorate in 2004. He is an honorary, fully-inducted member of Phi Mu Alpha, Xi Epsilon Chapter, the national music fraternity, and an honorary member of Sigma Alpha Iota, the national women’s music fraternity. Cook performs throughout the region and is in demand as a jazz clinician and adjudicator. Cook is a guest lecturer in music theory and composition at the Barbara Ingram School of the Arts in Hagerstown, Md., and is currently writing an online textbook, “Foundations of Music Theory,” to be released in July by Flat World Knowledge Publishing.

Corasaniti received his degree in music education from Shepherd, where he studied trumpet with Wayne Cameron, and composition and musicology with Cook. Since graduating, Corasaniti has pursued studies in Italy with internationally known trumpet teachers and musicologists. His honors thesis abstract was recently published in the Spring 2012 journal of the International Gustav Mahler Society in Vienna. The premise of the thesis is that Mahler was the true progenitor of Expressionism in music.

The City of Alba, located in the northern Piemonte region of Italy, is the stage for the dynamic and internationally influenced Alba Music Festival, which attracts more than 10,000 people each year. More than 100 students participate each year in the exchange of European and American cultures. Public dialogue does not end after each concert but continues with a full calendar of interactive classes, seminars and workshops.