FRIENDS OF MUSIC ANNOUNCE NEW CONCERT SEASON

The Friends of Music have announced the schedule for their 2019-2020 performance season.

The season will run from October 2019 through May 2020. It will include a total of five concerts: three by the Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra, one by the Friends’ resident string quartet, and another by a guest choral ensemble.

All of the concerts will be held in Shepherdstown’s historic Trinity Episcopal Church, which offers superb acoustics.

The first concert will be a small ensemble concert on Saturday, October 5 at 7:30 p.m. It will feature the Two Rivers String Quartet. The program will include Fratres, by contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt; Charles Gounod’s Quartet No. 3 in A minor; and Mozart’s Quartet No. 14 in G major

The other concerts will be as follows:

• Saturday, November 23, 2019, 7:30 p.m. Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra. The program, entitled “Magic and Majesty,” will include Mendelssohn’s Fair Melusina Overture, de Falla’s El Amor Brujo, and Beethoven’s 8th Symphony. Mezzo-soprano Kyle Engler will be the featured guest artist.

• Saturday, March 28, 2020, 7:30 p.m. Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra. The program, entitled “Untried and True,” will include works by two American composers, Richard Rodney Bennett’s Saxophone Concerto and James Grant’s Waltz for Betz; Borodin’s Nocturne; and Grieg’s Holberg Suite. The guest artist will be tenor saxophonist Anjan Shah.

• Saturday, April 18, 2020, 7:30 p.m. A concert by Winchester Musica Viva, a choral group. Their program will include Schubert’s Mass No. 2 in G major; Bach’s Cantata No. 127; and several original works written for the concert by Georgiann Tool, of Shepherdstown.

• Saturday, May 16, 2020, 7:30 p.m. Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra. The program, entitled “Highland/Lowland,” will feature performances of Schubert’s Octet in F major and Serenata in vano, by Danish composer Carl August Nielsen.

Admission to all of the concerts will be free for Friends of Music members. The fee for annual memberships is $150 per person. Nonmembers will be able to purchase tickets for individual concerts; the price will be $30 per person for the Chamber Orchestra concerts and $25 per person for the String Quartet concert and the Winchester Musica Viva concert.

Friends’ memberships and 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 an independent, local non-profit organization that was founded in 1999 to support and promote musical excellence. It is governed by a board of directors made up of local-area citizens.

The Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra is the only professional chamber orchestra in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia and one of only three in the state. It was established by the Friends of Music in 2007 and has been sustained by the Friends since its inception. Jed Gaylin was named Music Director in 2012. He also serves as the Music Director of Baltimore’s Hopkins Symphony Orchestra and the Bay Atlantic Symphony in New Jersey, and is an Artist in Residence at New Jersey’s Stockton University.

This year’s Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra concerts are being supported by a grant from the WV Department of Arts, Culture and History and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the WV Commission on the Arts.