Shenandoah Performs News • • • • •

Festival Brings International Performers to Winchester

WINCHESTER – This summer, from June 11th – 20th, Shenandoah Conservatory will open its doors – and outdoor stage – to thousands of music lovers for “Shenandoah Performs,” a two-week festival of extraordinary performances by visiting artists from world-renowned orchestras and members of the Shenandoah Conservatory faculty, as well as top regional and international students.

The idea is simple: to bring beautiful music to a beautiful place. Yet the combination of offerings is rich and varied, with concerts designed to delight everyone, from the most sophisticated professionals to children. Highlights include two professional chamber music concerts – one performed by Trio Cracovia, the other by The Young Danish String Quartet – three festival orchestra concerts, and a recording session of “From the Top,” to which the public is invited.

Like such major performance centers as Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, Shenandoah Conservatory was chosen as a taping site by “From the Top,” a hit weekly radio series that showcases outstanding young classical musicians selected in a nationwide search. Each one-hour program presents pre-collegiate musicians whose stunning individual performances are combined with interviews, sketches, and musical games. Now aired on nearly 250 stations around the United States, the show has the distinction of being the most popular weekly classical music program on the radio today.

In addition, thanks to a new relationship between Shenandoah Performs and the World Federation of International Music Competitions, the winner of the Carl Nielsen Competition in Denmark will perform each year in Winchester.

The orchestral concerts – two classical and the pops finale – will be performed on campus, on an outdoor stage. Two children’s concerts, to include an operetta composed by Dr. Eugenia Evans called “Kittens” and a selection influenced by Babar, the famous elephant.

Behind the scenes, another group will be enjoying a unique opportunity: a limited number of superior student musicians will study and perform with professional artists in a two-week intensive program.

Jan Wagner, Artistic Director of the festival and Associate Professor at the Conservatory, came up with the idea of bringing faculty, visiting professionals, and students together to form a festival orchestra that can perform as a whole and in smaller ensembles in beautiful settings in historic Winchester.

“As both music educator and musician,” notes Wagner, “I wanted to build onto Shenandoah Conservatory’s reputation as a premier musical training ground, while offering the community a program that rivals the greatest music festivals in this country.”

The Shenandoah Conservatory Performing Arts Festival, “Shenandoah Performs,” will expand the Conservatory’s tradition of global outreach by bringing some of the best international talent to Winchester each summer. Wagner’s extensive experience conducting in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Australia, Mexico, and his native Venezuela helps promote the kind of musician-to-musician networking that is rapidly building awareness of Shenandoah Conservatory far beyond Winchester.

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National Radio Program Seeks Young Musicians
To Audition For Live Recording at SU, June 13

WINCHESTER, VA (March 19, 2004) — “From the Top,” the hit radio show heard on nearly 250 radio stations across the nation, is now soliciting audition applications from elementary, middle and high school classical musicians, ages 9 to 18, for a live recording of “From the Top,” to be performed at Shenandoah University’s Armstrong Concert Hall on June 13 at 2 p.m.

“From the Top” producers selected Shenandoah University as a recording site as part of the upcoming Shenandoah Conservatory Performing Arts Festival, “Shenandoah Performs,” a two-week, classical music festival to premiere on campus, June 11-20.

The weekly radio program showcases performances and stories of exceptional, pre-college age musicians. Solo performers for all instruments, as well as instrumental or vocal ensembles with no more than six performers, are invited to participate. Students not selected for the June 13 recording session may be considered for future tapings in cities throughout the United States.

Hosted by acclaimed pianist Christopher O'Riley, “From the Top” presents five young performers or ensembles during each broadcast and intersperses their stunning artistry with lively interviews, lighthearted musical games and radio-theatre comedy skits. Many of the programs feature famous names from the music world, including Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Mark O'Connor, Richard Stoltzman, Eileen Ivers, Edgar Meyer and Judy Collins.

"This is the kind of program that not only gives hard-working and serious young adults the credit and attention they deserve," says Susan Basu, manager of Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra in Rochester, N.Y., "but also stimulates a deeper interest in classical music and makes it appear less remote and elitist."

“From the Top” is produced by Tom Vignieri in association with WGBH/Boston and the New England Conservatory of Music, and is distributed nationally by Public Radio International. The program is endorsed by the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts, the Music Educators National Conference, the American Symphony Orchestra League and the Music Teachers National Association.

Application packets for “From the Top” are available on the program’s Web site at www.fromthetop.org; by mail at “From the Top,” 295 Huntington Ave., Suite 201, Boston, Mass., 02115; or by phone at 617/437.0707. Applications and recorded auditions are accepted continuously and on a rolling admissions basis.