“Your Destination for Live Music” is the title of the 2009-10 season for the orchestra.
All seven concerts in the subscription season will be held at 7:30 p.m. at Pasquerilla Performing Arts Center on the Pitt-Johnstown campus in Richland Township.
While not a part of the regular season, the 17th annual Opera Festival, featuring world renowned international opera stars singing with the symphony, will be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 19 at the Arts Center. The festival includes a lavish reception and gourmet buffet with live and silent auctions held at the Pasquerilla Conference Center in downtown Johnstown following the concert.
The Symphony’s 81st season will begin with “Gala Opening” on Oct. 17, featuring young and rising violinist Bella Hristova performing Mendelssohn’s “Violin Concerto. “She is 16,” Jaray said. “When I judge competitions, the talent and maturity from ages 10 to 12 is mind-boggling.” The concert also will include Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture,” which Brahms called a jolly potpourri of student songs, and will end with the pathos and passion of Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 4.”
On Nov. 14, “Heroes, Villians and Witches” will bring a bit of the fantastic to the concert stage. Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” Berlioz’s “The March to the Scaffold” and “Witches’ Sabbath” from Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” will set the mood for Halloween characters, while melodies from Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” and John Williams’ “Star Wars” will provide the contrasting heroic figures.
On Dec. 12, “Christmas Around the World” will be brought close to home with holiday music in all musical genres performed by the orchestra, symphony chorus and special guest artists.
After a break in January, the concert on Feb. 13 will bring “Passion and Romance on the Silver Screen” with well-known tunes from the world of cinema. Music from “Gone With the Wind” and “Casablanca” will be among those featured.
On March 13, “The Titans and Shining Brass” will showcase members of the symphony’s brass section. The Three Rivers Horn Quartet, which includes Amber Ramsey Fantini, Denise Gamble, Bryan Adkin and Dennis Emert on French horn, will perform Schumann’s “Konzertstück for Four Horns,” and the orchestra’s principal tuba, Zach Collins, will offer “Tuba Concerto” by Erie Ewazen. The symphony will end the concert with Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7.”
On April 10, “Youth and Sunshine” will bring the talents of the Johnstown Symphony Youth Orchestra center stage as they perform with their older counterparts in the symphony. These young instrumentalists come from more than a dozen school districts in the four-county region. Music will include Copland’s “Billy the Kid Suite,” “Capriccio Espagnol” by Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky’s “Capriccio Italien” and Ravel’s “Bolero.”
The final concert of the season will bring some “American Fireworks” to the stage with compositions by American composers, which were written about American events and scenes. Music will feature “Strike Up the Band Overture” by Gershwin; “West Side Story Suite” by Leonard Bernstein; “Old American Songs” by Aaron Copland; and “Suite From the American Scene” by William Grant Still. Johnstown Symphony Chorus will sing selections from Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.”
-Ruth Rice, Tribune Democrat