a tempo Summer 2008

Festival series announced

The 29th season of the Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts’ Festival Series 2008–09 will bring a variety of highly talented performers to Northwestern Ohio.

The series opens with the return of jazz violinist Regina Carter on Friday, Sept. 19, performing on the Kobacker Concert. Carter previously performed at BGSU in 2002 on the Festival Series and during Jazz Week. Over the past seven years, she and her group have brought audiences to their feet with exhilarating performances worldwide. Time magazine says “Regina Carter creates music that is wonderfully listenable, probingly intelligent and, at times, breathtakingly daring…taking the listener into the future of Jazz” Carter has performed with the Atlanta Symphony, Minnesota Symphony and Milawaukee Symphony. She has also performed with multiple jazz and pop artists. Carter was the first jazz musician and African-American to play the legendary Guarneri del Gesu violin owned by composer Nicolo Paganini. She has released five solo albums and has recorded with Patti Labelle, Aretha Franklin, Mary J. Blidge and Lauryn Hill. In fall 2006, Carter was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of her exceptional creativity and the future she represents to he creative arts.

The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra will perform on the Lois M. Nitschke Memorial Concert on Saturday, Nov. 15. The orchestra was founded in the 1940s as the national radio orchestra and was known as the “Kol Israel Orchestra.” In the 1970s, the orchestra expanded and became the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Israel Broadcasting Authority. Since its inception, the orchestra has had five musical directors: Mendi Rodan, Lukas Foss, Gary Bertini, Lawrence Foster and David Shallon. During a European Tour in 1996, the orchestra gained considerable international acclaim and recognition and was immediately invited to participate in three additional prestigious tours of South America, Europe and the United States. As the premier orchestra in Israel's capital city, the JSO has been dedicated to presenting masterpieces from the baroque to the contemporary, often presenting the Israel premieres of these works.

Saturday, Feb. 14, soprano Danielle de Niese will perform. The Australian–born American soprano has been captivating audiences since childhood, when she was a fixture of Los Angeles local television hosting a weekly arts showcase for teenagers, which she won an Emmy Award. While still a freshman at the Mannes School of Music, she became, at age 18, the youngest artist ever to enter the Metropolitan Opera studio. While training in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program of the Metropolitan Opera, she made her house debut at age 19 as Barbarina in a new Jonathan Miller “Le Nozze di Figaro.” Other early engagements included Lauretta in “Gianni Schicchi” for the Los Angeles Opera, Nannetta in “Falstaff” for the Santa Fe Opera, and concerts with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony. “Opera News” says of de Niese “…not just a superb performer but a phenomenal one.”

Performing on the Louise F. Reese Memorial Concert will be Rick Benjamin’s Paragon Ragtime Orchestra on Friday, April 3. The PRO’s repertoire is a varied one, skipping from Blues to waltzes, from operatic parodies and novelty numbers to marches and popular songs of the era. The PRO is regarded as the leading exponent of vintage American popular music, and it remains the world’s most active ensemble of its kind. Notable engagements include concerts for the inaugural season of the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, the Ravinia Festival, the Washington Performing Arts Society at Lisner Auditorium, the Brucknerhaus in Linz, Austria, and around New York at the Tilles Center, Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, the South Street Seaport and the 92nd Street Y. The PRO is frequently heard in historic theater and movie palaces such as Cleveland’s Ohio Theater, Chattanooga’s Tivoli and the Rialto in Joliet. The orchestra was selected to be America’s “Ambassador of Goodwill” at the World’s Fair in Seville, Spain.

All performances will be held in Kobacker Hall at 8 p.m. of the scheduled date. Season subscription prices are $110, $90 and $60 for adults and $90, $60 and $30 for students. Single tickets are $30, $25 and $18 and will not be available to the public until Sept. For subscription information call the box office weekdays, noon–6 p.m. at (800) 589-2224 or (419) 372-8171.

The complete festival series information is available in the events section of the college’s Web site.

Issue Date: Tuesday 5 August 2008 | Contact the CMA | Disclaimer