The Blue Ridge Orchestra (BRO) presents Finding Home, the season opener for its 25th season, with two afternoon performances scheduled. The concert on Saturday, December 7, will be held in Haywood Community College’s Charles Beall Auditorium, and on Sunday, December 8, the BRO will perform in the Lipinsky Auditorium at UNC-Asheville. Both performances are at 3 p.m.
Besides celebrating a quarter-century of performances, the BRO is also introducing new leadership. “We are tremendously excited to welcome our new music director, Dr. Emily Mariko Eng, director of wind bands at UNC Asheville,” says Deb Kenney, the BRO’s board president. “We know our ability to thrive will be enhanced under her baton.” Eng was a guest conductor in the BRO’s Spring Fourth concert last season.
Finding Home will be a concert that reflects upon the history of this non-profit organization of devoted musicians. “In our early days, the BRO often had to rehearse in different places than where we performed, with no real ‘home,’” Kenney says. “Then, roughly 12 years ago, a relationship with UNC Asheville provided rehearsal and performance space, in exchange for UNC Asheville students having the opportunity to play with the BRO for college credit.”
In addition to a selection of music that speaks to the theme of home, including Quinn Mason’s Inner City Rhapsody and Aaron Copland’s Letter from Home, the program will include some holiday favorites, among them Gustav Holst’s Christmas Day and Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride. Renowned baritone Isaiah Feken and the UNC Asheville choirs will join the orchestra for the performances.
As this anniversary season opens and Eng begins her tenure, the BRO is looking ahead to the next 25 years. “The fundamental purpose of the Blue Ridge Orchestra has been a constant: as a community/volunteer orchestra, to provide an opportunity for musicians to perform great symphonic music, and to provide Western North Carolina music lovers access to affordable live symphonic music,” Kenney says. “Those tenets remain the central element of our current mission statement. The BRO comprises volunteer musicians from all walks of life who perform for the love of music, many of whom are founding members.”
As with other events being held this holiday season, hopes are that audiences will find solace after such a trying time in our WNC communities.
“Music evokes a wide range of emotions, from power to delicate subtlety, with infinite nuances in between,” says Kenney. “Additionally, music is also a result of many mathematical relationships: the pitch, the tempo, the intervals, etc. The combination of order and emotion, of dissonant chords resolving to harmonious ones, appeals to our sense of hope that challenges can lead to a better place, thereby nourishing and soothing the soul.”
The Blue Ridge Orchestra is a volunteer, non-profit ensemble. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit BlueRidgeOrchestra.org or call 828.782.3354. The Charles Beall Auditorium is in the Hemlock Building, at 185 Freedlander Drive, Clyde, and the Lipinsky Auditorium is located at 300 Library Lane, Asheville.
