Owens presents annual spring concert series

4/20/2011

Owens Community College will present Melodic Expressions, its sixth annual spring concert series, starting Thursday and running through May 14 at the Center for Fine and Performing Arts on the Perrysburg Township campus. Student and faculty musicians have planned seven distinct performances, all free.

The first events are Thursday, with the Owens Jazz Ensemble performing at 2 p.m. in the Rotunda and the choir singing at 7 p.m. in the theater. The choral concert will be repeated at 2 p.m. Monday in the Rotunda.

At 2 p.m. April 28, the college pop ensemble will showcase their talent and skill in a varied program in the Rotunda. Recitals by vocal students are set for 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. April 30 in the Studio Theatre.

On May 1, the Owens Concert Band will perform at 2:30 p.m. on the Mainstage Theatre. The series will wrap up with a faculty voice recital featuring Jo-Anne Chrysochoos and Jodi Jobuck at 7 p.m. May 14 in the Mainstage Theatre.

●

The Toledo Symphony will present its final Classics Series concerts in the Peristyle of the Toledo Museum of Art at 8 p.m. April 29 and 30. Titled Carnegie Hall in Toledo, the program is the same one planned for the symphony's May 7 Carnegie Hall debut in New York City.

Principal conductor Stefan Sanderling will lead the Shostakovich Symphony No. 6 in B minor to open the program. Following intermission, the collaborative theater work Every Good Boy Deserves Favour by Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn will be given its Toledo premiere. Sanderling will conduct the orchestra and University of Toledo theater professor Cornel Gabara will direct six actors from the Glacity Theatre Collective in the 1977 work. Tickets start at $20 at www.toledosymphony.com or 419-246-8000.

●

The Metropolitan Opera's Live in HD series continues Saturday with the screening of Richard Strauss's Capriccio at 1 p.m. in Rave Motion Pictures Fallen Timbers Cinemas.

Andrew Davis will conduct the production, which stars Renee Fleming, Sarah Connolly, and Joseph Kaiser. Tickets start at $20 at the box office. Encore date for this opera is 6:30 p.m. May 11.

The encore screening of Rossini's Le Comte Ory is set for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Rave Fallen Timbers.

●

The third annual Toledo Symphony-sponsored excursion to the Chautauqua Institution in western New York state is accepting reservations for July 5-8. The historic center for arts, culture, and spiritual development on the western shore of Lake Chautauqua offers dawn to post-dusk activities including lectures, seminars, concerts and recitals, study groups, ecumenical worship and programs, and organized and individual sports and recreation opportunities.

Each week at Chautauqua focuses on a theme; this year the Toledo Symphony trip will take place during a weeklong exploration titled Applied Ethics: Government and the Search for the Common Good. Among highlights of the trip will be lectures by political analyst David Gergen, Rabbi David Saperstein, Theodore Olson, former U.S. Solicitor General, and Michael Sandel of Harvard University. Concerts by the Music School Festival Orchestra and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra with guest pianist plus a performance of Chekhov's Three Sisters also are happening during the visit.

The package includes deluxe motor coach transport, three nights at the stately Athenaeum Hotel, three full-day passes to all Chautauqua events, all meals, and an ice cream social. Cost per person, double occupancy, is $880.

For more information and reservations, contact Ellen Critchley at the Toledo Symphony, 419-418-0024 or ecritchley@toledosymphony.com.

●

Bowling Green State University composer Marilyn Shrude has been named a 2011 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, one of 180 scholars and artists selected from a field of 3,000 to receive funds to support independent work on a project of their own design.

A Distinguished Artist Professor at BGSU, Shrude has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1984 she became the first woman to receive the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award for Orchestral Music and, in 1998, became the first female to receive the Cleveland Arts Prize in Music.

Shrude has a master's degree and a doctorate from Northwestern University.

During the next academic year, Shrude will take a sabbatical to work on several commissioned works: a large chamber piece for the Brave New Works ensemble and a trio for the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival.

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