Rice orchestras to present 2016-2017 season debut concerts

Next week Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music will offer the first concerts of the season by its chamber and symphony orchestras. The chamber concert will be at 8 p.m. Sept. 25 and the symphony orchestra will perform at 8 p.m. Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. All concerts will be in Alice Pratt Brown Hall’s Stude Concert Hall. Larry Rachleff, director of orchestras and the Walter Kris Hubert Professor of Music, will conduct all three performances.

The chamber orchestra performance will feature Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme” by Thomas Tallis; Ginastera’s Harp Concerto, with harp soloist Naomi Hoffmeyer and conductor Benjamin Manis; the world premiere of Rice Professor of Composition and Theory Arthur Gottschalk’s “Upon Whose Shoulders We Stand”; and Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite.”

The symphony orchestra’s program will open with Smetana’s “Overture to ‘The Bartered Bride'” and will be followed with Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26, featuring Rice Professor of Piano Jon Kimura Parker as soloist. The concerts will conclude with Stravinsky’s “‘Feu d’artifice,’ Op. 4 (Fireworks)” and Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra. 

Tickets are required (reserved seating at no charge) for the symphony concerts. For reservations, call 713-348-8000. The chamber concert is free and seating is first-come, first-served; tickets are not required.

For more information, visit http://music.rice.edu/.