BRATTLEBORO — The Windham Orchestra will perform a medley of original compositions by local elementary and middle school students from our community on Sunday, March 24 at 3 p.m., at the Latchis Theatre.
The program, “Pathways to Imagination & Performance,” continues the orchestra's commitment to offering extraordinary opportunities for young artists and music lovers.
Violinist Anna Perkins, winner of the Windham Orchestra's Concerto Competition for High School Students, will perform “Symphonie Espagnole” by Édouard Lalo, accompanied by the Orchestra.
Director is Hugh Keelan.
A special abbreviated children's performance of this concert will be performed on Thursday, March 21, for Windham County school students.
Anchoring Sunday's performance is Dmitri Shostakovich's “1945 Symphony No. 9.” Intended to be a celebration of the Russian victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, a great joie de vivre, gaiety and brilliance mark this masterwork.
Shostakovich wrote, “If [my] Seventh and Eighth symphonies bore a tragic-heroic character, then in the Ninth a transparent, pellucid, and bright mood predominates.” He would also describe it as “a joyful little piece.”
Music teachers Andy Davis, Jim Kurty, Alli Lubin, and Dan Seiden have been working with students from Dover, Green Street, Oak Grove, Putney Central and The Grammar School.
Participating students include Kindyl Alfonso, Colette Anton, Owen Bailey, Sophie Basescu, Andrew Brooks, Elijah Burdo, Wesley Capitani, Seviah Cepeda, Clara Chambers, Gracie Childs, Pierce Clarke, Kylie Cleanthes, Julia Fillion, Andrew Foster, Miranda Fuller, Cassidy Gallivan, Henry Glajzer, Amelia Harrison, Aicher Hearon, Sam Kendrick, Sienna Lewis, Jamie Lumley, Jillian Mahon , Reed McKay, JonMichael, Kaitlyn North, Abraham Moore Odell, Michael Olson, Emma Paige, Grace Powers, Gus Powers, David Sherman, Alex Shriver, Nate Snell, Challie Vicary, and Garrett Weil.
Among the student compositions to be performed is “An Amalgamation in Four Flats” by Putney Central School eighth-graders Andrew Foster, Henry Glejzer and Nathan Snell. By matching key and tempo, the trio have combined their unique individual talents to create a joyous piece that sounds like the work of one composer.
“All composers create worlds of imagination and wonder that live in defiance of the day-to-day, and that is why everyone has an opportunity for inspiration as we play or listen to these young composers' works,” says Keelan. “We can open our minds with unbounded delight to the works or fragments that the young composers are offering.”
Anna Perkins shines
The concert continues highlighting an outstanding young instrumentalist, violinist Anna Perkins. In February, she was chosen the winner of the Windham Orchestra's 2013 Concerto Competition for High School Students from an unusually strong field of contestants.
Perkins will perform the first movement, Allegro non troppo, of the “Symphonie Espangole” by Édouard Lalo, accompanied by the orchestra. This movement, brooding and heavy, is a Frenchman's musical portrayal of Spain. The solo violinist becomes an irresistible guide, perhaps with magical powers, conjuring shifting passions and an occasional mood of solace in defiance of the stubborn and hardheaded patterns of the orchestra's landscape.
Now 16, Perkins began violin study at age 6. For the last nine years, she has been a student of Romina Kostare in Amherst, Mass. She has played in her schools' orchestras since third grade and is now co-concertmaster of Amherst Regional High School's top orchestra. She also plays with the Springfield Youth Orchestra.
She has participated in the ASTA String Camp at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Strings@Smith at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., the Massachusetts Western Jr. District Orchestra; the Massachusetts Western Sr. District Orchestra; the Massachusetts All-State Orchestra; and at the State Academy of Music “A. Glazunov” in Petrozavodsk, Russia while on a school exchange.
In the summer of 2012, she attended the Brevard Music Center and played in the Transylvania Symphony Orchestra. Anna also plays in the pit band for theater productions at Amherst Regional High School. When she's not practicing, she enjoys reading, playing softball, and watching “Downton Abbey.”
The performance concludes with Jean Sibelius' “Finlandia, opus 26,” the musical accompaniment to a rousing patriotic Finnish poem, “The Melting of the Ice on the Ulea River” by Zacharias Topelius.
Finland was already in a frenzy of assertiveness at the turn of the century, and the piece became a front for nationalist self-expression.
However, the bottled-up fury and fervid feeling of “Finlandia” speak loud and clear: other countries and audiences than Finnish have been moved to tears and inspired to uprising by this music. This piece is a perfect complement to Shostakovich's symphony. In Sibelius, even under the burden of personal or national oppression, the feelings are direct and powerful.
As Keelan explains, “All elements of this concert explore and amplify what it means to be human, to strive and perform, and we promise our audiences of any age an enjoyable and inspiring experience.”