Roberts Wesleyan College

In this episode of Performance Upstate, we'll hear from Pegasus, First Inversion, Roberts Wesleyan College Wind Ensemble; we'll visit the Geneva and Skaneateles Music Festivals and hear a Prelude and Fugue by J. S. Bach, as performed at the 2019 Rochester Early Music Festival.

On this episode of Performance Upstate we’ll hear an outstanding performance by 13-year-old pianist Christoper Zandieh, Winner of the 2018 MostArts Festival Young Pianist Competition and a $10,000 cash prize. Christopher Zandieh began his Suzuki piano studies at age 4 on Long Island, and, by age 6, enrolled at the School for Strings in NYC as a student of Marina Obukovsky.

We'll hear Christopher, as well as selections from the Roberts Wesleyan College Wind Ensemble, Pegasus Early Music, Eastman Collegium Viol Consort and Fanny Mendelssohn from the"Women Composers Across the Ages" concert at the Geneva Music Festival.

11/30   This week we'll hear more from the Geneva Music Festival, plus the Rochester Early Music Festival, the Roberts Wesleyan College Wind Emsemble and Oliver Brett performing both on harpsichord and organ.

One of the things that I am truly missing recently is playing as a part of community orchestras. Conductors of various ensembles are continuing to connect with and inspire their musicians even while we can't meet in person.  Dr. Paul Shewan, who is director of the Roberts Wesleyan College Community Orchestra, recently sent out some listening recommendations to the orchestra, and he said that it would be okay to share them online with you here too. ~Mona 

I hope you are all doing well. As music can provide comfort in difficult times such as these, I thought I would send you a list of pieces that are meaningful to me. It is my hope that, if you explore some of these pieces, they will be encouraging and uplifting to you. Feel free to dialogue and/or create your own list. Mine is by no means extensive. Enjoy!

In the Roberts Wesleyan College Community Orchestra, we are rehearsing the strikingly beautiful Andante Moderato from Mahler's Sixth Symphony for an upcoming concert. Our music director, Paul Shewan, loves this music very much - it shows in how he conducts it and speaks about it in rehearsal, so I asked him to write some thoughts on the music to share here on my blog. The timings he mentions in the piece coincide with the recording embedded in the post - with Riccardo Chailly conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. ~Mona