NEWS RELEASES

Release date: MAY 31, 2010

Stratford Symphony Orchestra offers sneak-peek final rehearsal tickets for its Summer Idyll Time concert

The Stratford Symphony Orchestra has been enjoying sold-out houses for much of this season, and it is about to present the second of its Water Music by the Avon concerts on Saturday, June 12.

However, the symphony is faced with the prospect of turning away patrons because the concert is already sold out. The concert, entitled Summer Idyll Time, will feature trumpet virtuoso Larry Larson in a program that includes Postcards from the Sky, by Mozetich; Wagner's Seigfried Idyll; and the great Trumpet Concerto and “Clock” Symphony by Joseph Haydn.

Because the performance venue is so intimate at Stratford City Hall, the symphony is offering our patrons an opportunity to attend a “preview” open rehearsal on Friday, June 11 at 7:30 pm.

Tickets for the preview are at the reduced rate at $15. Regular concert tickets are normally $25 to $30. Please order at www.stratfordsymphonyorchestra.ca or at one of the symphony ticket outlets: Fanfare Books at 92 Ontario St., or Anything Grows at 235 St Patrick St., Stratford.

Release date: MAY 12, 2010
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Nine concerts, first appearance at Festival Theatre
highlight Stratford Symphony Orchestra’s sixth season

Guest artists include Shane Cook, Yi-Jia Susanne Hou, Nadia Schpachenko, Richard Fitzpatrick, Sarah Jeffrey, and Angela Park

STRATFORD – The Stratford Symphony Orchestra will join forces with the Stratford Concert Choir and guest soloists to perform Handel’s Messiah at the Stratford Festival Theatre on Dec. 11, one of nine concerts in the symphony’s sixth season.  

“The programs we have set for our 2010-2011 season reflect our community’s demonstrated interests,” says Jerome David Summers, Music Director for the SSO, noting that attendance has risen 40 per cent, to date, in the orchestra’s current 2009-2010 season. “We want to build on this incredible success and growing interest in the performance of orchestral music here in Stratford, and especially look forward to our collaborations with our community and artistic partners.”

The season will open Oct. 22 with a gala performance featuring Canadian violinist Yi-Jia Susanne Hou, a performer called “absolutely phenomenal” by Yehudi Menuhin. She will play Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D and the orchestra will premiere an as-yet-untitled new work by the orchestra’s composer-in-residence, Christopher Meyer.

Next up is Californian-based pianist Nadia Schpachenko, playing Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto at the Nov. 27 concert, which will also feature one of the best known works in the classical repertoire, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.

The orchestra will celebrate A Baroque Christmas on December 11 with Messiah as the centrepiece, along with selections from Vivaldi’s Gloria and the Midnight Mass for Christmas by Charpentier. “We are thrilled to be performing at the Festival Theatre and hope this truly becomes a community celebration of music and the holiday season,” says Summers. Guest soloists are soprano Vanessa Lanch, mezzo soprano Rebecca Ballantyne, tenor Graham Thomson, and bass John Holland.

It wouldn’t be an SSO season without a Celtic concert, and this year’s version on January 22, 2011 features Stratford’s own Shane Cook, the Grand North American Fiddle Champion. The Stratford Police Pipe & Drums and the Nora Corrigan School of Irish Dance join the orchestra for this.
Burns Celtic Highland Fiddlefire, which will be preceded by the popular Robbie Burns Day Dinner, this year being mounted as a fundraiser for the SSO.

Travel to the heat of Italy in the middle of Stratford winter on February 18 with Flight to Italy, a concert featuring violist Karen Elaine, touted by the Los Angeles Times as “the soloist to bring the viola out of obscurity.” She will play the Berlioz tone poem Harold in Italy, and the orchestra performs Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, known as the “Italian Symphony.”

After the phenomenal audience response to the current season’s Opera Gala concert, the SSO once again will partner with talented opera singers for Operamania! on April 16, 2011, which will feature overtures, intermezzi, arias, choruses and duets from favourite grand operas. While the full slate of guest artists is yet to be confirmed, soprano Rachel Weisdorf, a winner in the SSO’s Emerging Artist Concerto competition, will be among the soloists.

The SSO’s final main series concert on Friday, May 13 will be Last Night at the Proms!, featuring two takes on A Midsummer Night’s Dream: readings from the Shakespeare play by actor Richard Fitzpatrick and a performance by the orchestra of the Mendelssohn incidental music by the same name. SSO board chair David Murray makes his conducting debut as the winner of an SSO silent auction. The orchestra’s own principal clarinetist, Kaye Royer, will perform Echoes, a new concerto by her husband, Canadian composer Ronald Royer. This concert also showcases another winner of the SSO’s Young Artist Concerto Competition, cellist Thomas Beard.

Apart from A Baroque Christmas at the Festival Theatre, 55 Queen Street, Stratford, all main series concerts will be performed at Central United Church, 194 Avondale Avenue, Stratford.

Two concerts at Stratford City Hall round out the 2010-11 season.

The first, on June 18, features pianist Angela Park playing the Mozart Concerto No. 21 (“Elvira Madigan”) and the orchestra performing Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 (“The Jupiter”). The final concert of the season on July 9, titled Baroque and Beyond, features Sarah Jeffery, principal oboist of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra performing the Vaughan Williams Oboe Concerto; she is joined by the SSO’s concertmaster designate, violinist Andrew Bensler, for Bach’s Double Concerto for Oboe and Violin.

All concerts for the season begin at 7:30 p.m., with the exception of the January 22 Celtic concert, whose 8 p.m. start time accommodates the preceding Robbie Burns dinner.

Subscriptions are available online at www.stratfordsymphonyorchestra.ca or through the orchestra’s ticket outlets: Anything Grows, 235 St. Patrick St. Stratford, and Fanfare Books, 92 Ontario St, Stratford.

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For further information, images, or to arrange interviews, please contact:
John David Sterne, Executive Director,
Stratford Symphony Orchestra
Telephone: 519-271-0990
Email: executivedirector@stratfordsymphonyorchestra.ca

Release date: JUNE 4, 2009
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