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April 26, 2007
More Than 100 Young Artists To Perform At Concert; World-Premier To Be Featured
“I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing,” a composition for string orchestra by local composer and Pennsylvania Academy of Music faculty member Simon Andrews, will receive its world premier this spring at an Academy concert. A flute choir, a guitar ensemble, two orchestras, several choral groups, chamber music ensembles and the debut of a boys choir will also be on the program when the Pennsylvania Academy of Music presents 125 young artists in its annual spring All-School Concert on Friday, May 18 at 7:00 p.m. in Franklin and Marshall College's Barshinger Hall in Lancaster. The concert is free and open to the public.
“This is always an important and exciting concert, representing the culmination of a year of hard work,” says Academy Dean Frances Veri. “It allows our students, working under the direction of some outstanding faculty artists, to share their gifts with each other and the community at large.”
The evening will include a wide range of repertoire and styles and will include two debuts – the Academy's new boys choir, Cambiata, will perform for the first time, and the Philharmonia Orchestra will present the premier of “I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing,” a composition by Dr. Simon Andrews, whose work on a refinishing of Mozart's Requiem received rave reviews at a Lancaster Symphony Concert in November.
His composition's title is taken from a line of T.S. Eliot's poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each/ I do not think that they will sing to me./I have seen them riding seaward on the waves/Combing the white hair of the waves blown back/When the wind blows the water white and black.
Dr. Andrews chose the title because “poetic titles engage the listeners' imagination.” The composition is divided into two sections offering “maximum contrast,” with a very slow section featuring chords “that melt” into one another, and a faster section that uses many scales that crash into each other. The resulting sound portrait should connect the listener to the title's images of mermaids singing and cavorting in the sea.
Dr. Andrews's piece will be presented near the end of the program but the concert begins with a presentation by the Academy choirs that will feature works by Aaron Copland, Stephen Foster and more.
Simon Maurer will then conduct the Sinfonia Orchestra, performing a Slovanic Dance setting as well as a movement from Bach's third Brandenburg Concerto.
The Academy flute choir under the direction of award-winning flutist Jennifer Grim will also perform, along with a guitar ensemble directed by Ernesto Tamayo, whose Twilight Concert earlier this season attracted a full house.
Newstead Trio member and string department head Dr. Michael T. Jamanis will conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra, whose offerings will include the Andrews premier, Copland's Red Pony Suite and two works featuring student soloists who were chosen through the Academy's concerto competition this year.
Addie Rose Brown, of Lancaster, will be the soloist in a Haydn piano concerto and Kathryn Westerlund, of Lebanon, will be the soloist in a cello concerto by the same composer.
The Pennsylvania Academy of Music is a non-profit pre-collegiate institution dedicated to the musical advancement of its students. Founded in 1990, the Academy attracts students from an immediate nine-county area as well as from around the world, who study disciplines ranging from instrumental, chamber music, orchestra, opera and vocal performance to music composition and theory, improvisation, accompanying ,jazz and recording. The Academy has a widely accomplished international faculty and is one of only 12 autonomous pre-collegiate music schools in the country accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music.
