Wyoming Arts Council

UW Symphony Orchestra's final performance of the season is April 16

Featured News | April 7, 2015

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The University of Wyoming Symphony Orchestra’s final performance of the season will be Thursday, April 16, at 7:30 p.m. in the UW Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts concert hall.

For ticket information, call (307) 766-6666. Tickets also are available at www.uwyo.edu/finearts, or at the Wyoming Union information desk or the Performing Arts box office. Tickets cost $10 for adults, $7 for senior citizens and $6 for students.

The concert will feature a combination of music and compositions spanning nearly 900 years. Included will be the well-known masterpiece, “Concierto de Aranjuez” by Rodrigo; Christopher Theofanidis’ “Rainbow Body”; “Dvořák’s 4th Symphony”; and an appearance by Croaitan guitarist Ana Vidovic.

“Concierto de Aranjuez” is a widely performed guitar concerto, a musical composition for a solo instrument accompanied by an orchestra, says Michael Griffith, UW Symphony Orchestra conductor and professor in the Department of Music.

“If you’ve not heard it in the concert hall, you certainly have heard this composition elsewhere,” he says. “American figure skater Michelle Kwan used this music at many televised events. Artists from Miles Davis, the Modern Jazz Quartet to Led Zeppelin have reinterpreted it, and popular British brass bands’ version was heard in the film ‘Brassed Off.’”

Dvořák’s “4th Symphony” came a couple decades before his best-known work, the “New World Symphony.” Griffith says Dvořák was just starting to explore the folk-music-as-symphonic-material ideal in “4th Symphony” that would dominate his later productions. Dvořák’s earlier influence, the German composer Wagner, also is evident in his music.

Theofanidis’ “Rainbow Body” is a work from 2000 but is based on far older music, Griffith says. Its main melody was composed by Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th century German Benedictine abbess. Her “Ave Maria, o auctrix vite” has distinctive contours and a deeply emotional tone, Griffith says.

Three members of the UW Department of Music faculty, Maureen Boddicker, Holly Dalrymple and Nicole Lamartine, will sing Hildegard’s song before the orchestra plays “Rainbow Body.”

Vidovic, a guest guitarist, also will be featured during the performance. Her father was an electric bass player, but she was drawn to the acoustic, classical side of the guitar. A child prodigy, she performed internationally by age 11. Vidovic has performed all over the world and has won many international competitions.

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