TICKETS ON SALE NOW FOR NOV. 23 ORCHESTRA CONCERT IN SHEPHERDSTOWN WV

TICKETS ON SALE NOW FOR NOV. 23 ORCHESTRA CONCERT IN SHEPHERDSTOWN WV

The Friends of Music will present a Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra concert in Shepherdstown, WV, on Saturday, November 23.

The concert will be held at Trinity Episcopal Church at 7:30 p.m.

Entitled “Magic and Majesty,” it will feature three works: Mendelssohn’s overture to “The Fair Melusina” (which is loosely based on a Medieval folk tale about a little mermaid who longed to be human); Manuel de Falla’s score for “El Amor Brujo” (a ballet about an Andalusian gypsy woman haunted by the ghost of her deceased husband); and Beethoven’s 8th Symphony.

The Orchestra’s music director, Jed Gaylin, will conduct.

Gaylin said the concert program will present “contrasting halves.” First,” he said, “Mendelssohn’s overture juxtaposes the little mermaid’s fluid aquatic motions with the razor-sharp sounds of her more anguished life on terra firma. Magic transformations also abound in the mystical spiritof de Falla’s compelling score. Beethoven’s streamlined yet grand and compelling 8th Symphony brings the audience back to earth, but with unparalleled passion and vigor.”

Mezzo-soprano Kyle Engler will be the featured artist for the de Falla work. Ms. Engler has performed with orchestras throughout North America. She has been praised for her extreme versatility in both operatic and chamber music. The Baltimore Sun has called her “a virtuoso of a high order.”

Admission to the concert will be free for Friends of Music members. The ticket price for others will be $30 per person ($27.50 before November 10). Tickets can be purchased on the Friends’ website at www.friendswv.org; or by mail (FOM, PO Box 220, Shepherdstown, WV 25443); or, if space is available, at the church the evening of the performance. Visa and Master Card will be accepted.

The Friends of Music is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1999 to support and promote musical excellence. The Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra was established by the Friends in 2007 and held its first concert in the fall of 2008. Gaylin has been music director since 2012. He also serves as the music director of Baltimore’s Hopkins Symphony Orchestra and the Bay Atlantic Symphony in New Jersey, and he is an Artist in Residence at New Jersey’s Stockton University.

This season’s Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra concerts are once again being presented with generous financial assistance from the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts.