The Fresno State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dr. Thomas Loewenheim, will present its final concert of the season at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 7, in the music concert hall on campus.
The concert, titled “The Spotlight on the Students and Anna Hamre” will feature Dr. Anna Hamre in her final concert conducting the orchestra before her retirement from Fresno State. It also will showcase student musicians and the world premiere of a student composition.
The concert will open with first movement of Shostakovich’s exuberant Piano Concerto No. 2, performed by Jordan Williams, a graduate student in piano performance and the winner of the Fresno State concerto competition.
The orchestra will debut the composition “VY Canis Major” by student composer Juan Ismael Maldonado. The work sets the listener in outer space, flying through the cosmos before coming across the dying star VY Canis Majoris, one of the largest stars ever discovered.
Hamre and the Fresno State Concert Choir will join the orchestra for a performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Serenade to Music,” considered by some to be among the most beautiful choral works of the 20th century. The concert will conclude with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, a depiction of the tragedy, despair, terror and violence of the Stalin years in Russia and the country’s resolution following Stalin’s death in 1953.
Tickets are available at the box office for $15 general, $10 for Fresno State employees and seniors and $5 for students.
For more information, contact Loewenheim at 559.278.7547 or tloewenheim@csufresno.edu.
