Harp Madness features soloist, SonoNovo Ensemble

Harpist Julie Buzzelli will be the featured soloist in Harp Madness, Friday at 7 p.m. in Trinity Episcopal Church, 316 Adams St.

Harpist Julie Buzzelli will be the featured soloist in Harp Madness, a 7 p.m. concert Friday at Trinity Episcopal Church, 316 Adams St. Buzzelli is adjunct assistant professor of harp at Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts, and a busy instructor and performer in the region.

The SonoNovo Ensemble, Trinity‘s resident chamber ensemble, will join Buzzelli for this all-French program of 20th century compositions. Wayne Anthony, founder of SonoNovo, will conduct.

The concert opens with Marcel Grandjany’s Aria in Classic Style, followed by Claude Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun. The final work on the program will be Darius Milhaud’s Chamber Symphonies, five short works exploring color and tonality.

Tickets are $15-$20 and may be reserved at 419-241-1231. Student rush tickets will be $5 one hour before the concert, with valid student identification.

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The Toledo Symphony will present its annual musical celebration of Black History with a concert at 5 p.m. Feb. 24 in St. Martin de Porres Church, 1119 W. Bancroft St. Resident conductor Jeffrey Pollock will lead the orchestra in music by Augustus Hailstork, W.C. Handy, Duke Ellington, and a David Jex arrangement of James Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice.”

Joining the symphony and Pollock will be popular Toledo vocalist Nate Gurley, who will be backed by the symphony’s Jazz Trio in music to be announced at the concert.

Tickets are $15 in advance at 419-241-1231 and $20 at the door. Student tickets are $10.

The symphony will present the second of its annual set of Young People’s Concerts at 9:45 and 11 a.m. Feb. 21 in the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle. 

Pollock will conduct a program of music by American composers including Leonard Bernstein, Morton Gould, Ferde Grofe, and Aaron Copland.

The concert will conclude with the Toledo Blade March by Edwin Franko Goldman.

This march was written by Goldman for a high school music festival sponsored by The Blade during the early 1930s.

According to Blade reporter Ralph Phelps, writing in 1953, the newspaper’s sponsorship of the festival aimed to demonstrate the importance of music education in public high schools.

Goldman, then much in demand as composer and conductor, was invited by The Blade to craft a march to be premiered in 1932, during that year’s festival. The composer was so moved by the benevolence of the project that he agreed to come to town to waive his normally high fee to aid the cause.

The festival was held that year in the Scott High School Stadium, where some 11,000 local residents flocked to hear the first playing of The Toledo Blade March. And Goldman was so taken by Toledo, he stayed on for three days to see the sights.

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The Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series will continue with a new Met production of Verdi’s Rigoletto at 12:55 p.m. Saturday in the Westfield Franklin Park and Fallen Timbers cinema complexes.

This new production by director Michael Mayer has generated much buzz because it is set in Las Vegas in the 1960s — neon, the Mob, showgirls.

Tickets are $22-$24 at the box office. The opera runs 3½ hours.

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With Toledo’s production of Don Giovanni on Friday and Sunday at the Valentine Theatre, the Met’s Live in HD screening of Rigoletto, and a special performance of Handel’s Radamisto at the University of Michigan on Sunday, opera lovers have a possible trifecta of winners this weekend.

One could attend the Friday performance in Toledo, watch the Saturday screening not far away, then drive to Ann Arbor to hear Handel, with famed countertenor David Daniels, in its 4 p.m. production on Sunday in Hill Auditorium. It would be nearly a dozen hours of live opera.

The English Concert with Harry Bicket conducting will play the beautiful score in this concert version of Handel’s politically driven 1720 work. Also in the cast are mezzo Patricia Bardon, bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni, baritone Jonathan Lasch, and sopranos Joelle Harvey and Brenda Rae in this rarely produced opera.

Radamisto tells the tale of an Armenian ruler, King Tiridate, and exposes desire, lust for personal power, and infatuation in beautiful arias and ensembles.

Tickets range from $10-$65 at 734-764-2538 or www.ums.org.

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BGSU will present another concert in its Young People’s Concert series; this one is titled Divas in Love, and will feature vocal students from the College of Musical Arts. The concert starts at 11 a.m. Saturday in Bryan Hall of the Moore Musical Arts Center. For ticket information, call 419-372-8171 or www.bgsu.edu/arts.

Music at the Manor House next week will feature violin students of Penny Thompson Kruse in a free public concert starting at 7:30 p.m. in Wildwood Preserve Metropark.

Pianist Laura Melton will perform on the Faculty Artist Series at 8 p.m. Wednesday in Bryan Hall. The concert is free.

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Kudos to the many young musicians in this region who performed so beautifully in the Toledo Symphony Youth Orchestra concert last Sunday in the Peristyle. To see and hear so many young people focusing on playing fine music is inspiring and reassuring that classical music will continue to thrive in this area.

Kudos also to conductors Kenneth Thompson, who led the Philharmonic group through most of Dvorak’s wonderful Symphony No. 9 “From the New World,” to Wasim Harary, who conducted the Symphonic Orchestra, and to Robert Mirakian, who led the Concert group.

Next on the busy young musicians’ schedule will be a Side-by-Side concert in which players from the Toledo Symphony join the youth players. That concert is set for March 17.

Items for News of Music should be sent to svallongo@theblade.com at least two weeks ahead of the performance date.