October 11, 2010

Free concert opens season for Hopkins Symphony Orchestra

The Hopkins Symphony Orchestra opens its 2010–2011 season with two musical depictions of Scotland by composers who weren’t Scottish. HSO music director Jed Gaylin conducts Felix Mendelssohn’s at turns snappy and mystical “Scottish” Symphony and excerpts from Gaetano Donizetti’s melodramatic opera Lucia di Lammermoor in a collaboration with Opera Vivente.

The free concert is offered as a Free Fall Baltimore event at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 16, in Shriver Hall Auditorium on the Homewood campus. Tickets or reservations are not required. Opera Vivente general director John Bowen gives a pre-concert talk at 7 p.m.

The Lucia excerpts, sung in English, are Enrico’s Act I revenge aria, Lucia and Edgardo’s duet, the famous sextet, Raimondo’s aria describing Lucia’s murder of her bridegroom and the final scene. The singers are Michelle Seipel (Lucia), Frederic Rey (Edgardo), John Brandon (Enrico), Christopher Austin (Raimondo), Peter Scott Drackley (Arturo) and Jennifer Blades (Alisa). John Bowen narrates. Opera Vivente will perform a fully staged Lucy of Lammermoor in English in late October, with these singers and Gaylin conducting.

Gaylin, now in his 18th season as HSO music director, also directs the Bay-Atlantic Symphony and the Cape May Music Festival, both in New Jersey. He is principal guest conductor of the National Film and Radio Philharmonic in Beijing.

The Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, a program of the Johns Hopkins University, is the only community orchestra in the city of Baltimore. Each year, the HSO offers four symphonic and three chamber concerts, and a special children’s concert. HSO members are Johns Hopkins students, alumni, faculty and staff, as well as Baltimore-Washington area musicians.

HSO programs are supported by grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts.

For more information, call 410-516-6542, e-mail hso@jhu.edu or go to www.jhu.edu/jhso.