Oct. 21, 2015

Saratoga Orchestra kicks off the 2015/2016 Season with “New Worlds, New Visions” a set of programs at 7 p.m. on Oct. 24  in Langley and at 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 25  in Oak Harbor. Music Director Anna Edwards will lead the orchestra in musical works by Dukas, Boulanger, Elgar and Dvorak.

This season, the Saratoga Orchestra is a proud recipient of a Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy (WPA) performance grant. The orchestra will present two rarely heard works by early-twentieth-century French composer, Lili Boulanger. Lili, the younger sister of noted music pedagogue, Nadia, was the first female to win the prestigious music composition prize, Prix de Rome, at age 19. Saratoga Orchestra will perform “D’un soir triste” and “D’un matin de printemps,” two of Boulanger’s last major orchestral works completed in 1918, just prior to her premature death at age 24. The mission of WPA is bringing women composers into the concert hall and dispelling the myth that there are no great women composers, but rather audiences that have not been allowed to hear them.

Guest soloist, cellist Lavena Johanson, will be featured on Edward Elgar’s intimately melancholic “Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85.” Ms. Johanson, a Seattle native, is now based on the east coast, having completed her musical training at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. She is an active performer as a soloist and chamber musician with an interest in experimental music and also teaches for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program.

Dvorak’s monumental “Symphony #9, ‘From the New World’ Op. 95,” will conclude the program. Composed in 1893 while Dvorak was teaching in the United States, the symphony has become one of the most popular pieces in all of orchestral literature and even accompanied the Apollo 11 astronauts to the Moon in 1969. The popular song “Goin’ Home,” was adapted from the Largo movement of the symphony.

Saratoga Orchestra is pleased to announce a new series of pre-concert “stage-side” chats for the 2015/2016 Season. Music Director Anna Edwards will be joined prior to the Oct. 24 concert at 6:15 p.m. by Classical KING-FM radio host, Dave Beck, for a short discussion of the evening’s program.

General Admission tickets are $25  for adults and $20 for seniors and military. Students under 18 admitted free (under 14 must be accompanied by a paying adult). Tickets are available at Moonraker Books in Langley, bayleaf in Coupeville, and Click Music in Oak Harbor and online at Brown Paper Tickets. Cash, checks and credit cards will be accepted at the door. The venues are South Whidbey High School in Langley and Oak Harbor High School in Oak Harbor.

For more detailed information and tickets please visit our website www.sowhidbey.com or call 360-929-3045.