The Narragansett Bay Symphony Community Orchestra will explore the tension between classical tradition and musical innovation when it takes the stage for its winter concert on Sunday, March 8, at 3 p.m. at East Providence High School.
Guest conductor Zeke Fetrow will lead the orchestra through a program spanning more than a century of orchestral music, from Johannes Brahms to Aaron Copland.
The concert opens with Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture, composed in 1880 as a musical thank-you to the University of Breslau after it awarded the composer an honorary doctorate. The piece weaves together student drinking songs with the well-known theme “Gaudeamus igitur.”
Award-winning New England violinist Charles Dimmick will join the orchestra as guest soloist for Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, one of the most frequently performed works in the solo violin repertoire.
The program continues with Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, the dramatic prelude to the final act of “Die Walküre,” part of Wagner’s epic operatic cycle “Der Ring des Nibelungen.”
The concert closes with Aaron Copland’s Suite from “The Tender Land,” an orchestral work drawn from his opera about a Midwestern farm family. Copland was inspired to write the opera after viewing photographs from the Depression era.
The concert takes place in the auditorium at East Providence High School, 2000 Pawtucket Ave. Admission is pay-what-you-think-is-fair, with tickets available at the door or in advance at nabsco.org. Concertgoers are also encouraged to bring a nonperishable food item to support the Rhode Island Community Food Bank.
NaBSCO’s season finale is scheduled for Sunday, June 7. For more information, visit nabsco.org, email team@nabsco.org or call 401-274-4578.