SU Presents 'Memorable Melodies' Spring Music Festival April 30-May 14

SALISBURY, MD---Works by Handel, Tchaikovsky, Leroy Anderson, Duke Ellington, Leonard Bernstein and more are spotlighted during Salisbury University’s “Memorable Melodies” spring music festival.

All performances are 7:30 p.m. in Holloway Hall Auditorium.

For what may be the first time in nearly two decades locally, the full Handel’s Messiah is performed at SU on Saturday, April 30. Featuring the University Chorale, Salisbury Chorale and Harlem Festival Orchestra, the one-performance-only concert includes some 90 vocalists and 24 instrumentalists.

Dr. William Folger, director of choral studies, and John Wesley Wright, voice professor, are artistic directors. Both teach in the University’s Department of Music. Concert sponsors include the Peter and Judy Jackson Music Performance Fund; Bank of Delmarva; Scott Duncan, in memory of former Salisbury Chorale member Michael Doyle; and the SU offices of the Provost and Dean of the Charles R. and Martha N. Fulton School of Liberal Arts.

Admission is $20, $15 for seniors age 60 and over, free for children ages 12 and under. Admission for SU students, faculty and staff is by donation. A parking shuttle will be provided. Tickets are available at SU’s Department of Music Office, Fulton Hall Room 200. Tickets also may be reserved by phone at 410-543-6385.

The Salisbury Pops takes center stage as the festival’s next ensemble on Tuesday, May 3. Conductor Lee Knier leads the ensemble in a medley from Bernstein’s West Side Story, along with a program of dance music including the tango, two-step, salsa, swing and polka. Other songs are Leroy Anderson’s “The Irish Washerwoman,” a big band medley, and Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark,” featuring Dr. John Lamkin of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore’s Fine Arts Department on trumpet. SU music major Timea Bodi also is featured as a piano soloist with the Pops on Louis Moreau Gottschalks’ “Célèbre Tarantelle.” A parking shuttle will be provided.

The festival continues with the Jazz Brazz Big Band on Thursday, May 5. Dr. Jerry Tabor conducts the ensemble with favorites such as Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much” and jazz standards such as “When Sonny Gets Blue,” “That Old Black Magic,” “One by One,” “Blue Bossa” and “Joy Spring” with trumpeter Tom Davis. Featured vocalists are Carly Ball and Laura Spies. A parking shuttle will be provided.

The Vocal Jazz Ensemble opens the festival’s second week on Tuesday, May 10. Conducted by Folger, its program includes standards such as “Misty,” “All of Me” and “Voice Dance.” Solo sections will be performed by student, faculty and guest artists.

Sponsored by the Department of Music, admission to the Salisbury Pops, Jazz Brazz Big Band and Vocal Jazz Ensemble concerts is free and the public is invited. For more information call 410-543-6385.

“Memorable Melodies” culminates with the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra’s closing 25th season Spring Concert, “Tchaikovsky and Friends,” conducted by Dr. Jeffrey Schoyen, music director, on Saturday, May 14.

Guest cellist Wesley Baldwin joins the SSO on such favorite Tchaikovsky works as “Rococo Variations,” “Pezzo Cappricioso” and “Andante Cantabile,” as well as Borodin’s Symphony No. 2. The cellist for the James Piano Quartet, the resident ensemble at Sweet Briar College, VA, Baldwin has performed as a soloist and in chamber ensembles throughout the United States and Europe. He is a professor of cello at the University of Tennessee.

Admission is $20, $15 for seniors, $5 for children 12 and under. For tickets visit www.salisburysymphonyorchestra.org. For more information call 410-548-5587. A pre-concert talk by Lyubov Paskova of the Department of Music is at 6:30 p.m. in the Great Hall.  In addition, a free concert study guide for Symphony No. 2 is available on the SSO Web site. A parking shuttle will be provided.

The Local Owner Restaurant Association offers 10 percent off the entire check at participating restaurants Friday-Sunday, May 13-15, with an SSO ticket or stub. For a list of restaurants visit www.lorarestaurants.org.

Restaurant 213 in Fruitland, MD, offers a prix fixe dinner for SSO patrons with tickets or stubs from Friday-Saturday, May 13-14.

For applicable concerts, parking shuttles run from the Guerrieri University Center parking lot off Dogwood Drive to Holloway Hall from 6:30-7:30 p.m. and return following the performance.

For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.