The Blue Ridge Orchestra (BRO) will perform its final concerts of the 25th Anniversary Season on Friday, May 2, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, May 4, at 3 p.m. as part of the biennial Asheville Amadeus Festival. Performances will be held at UNCA’s Lipinsky Auditorium.
Dr. Emily Mariko Eng, BRO’s music director, has created a program that includes works by Leonard Bernstein—Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs and Symphonic Dances from West Side Story—and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, Pastoral. A highlight will be a lyrical piece for jazz quartet and orchestra, Mom, by Richard Shulman, an Asheville-based composer and a friend and colleague of Dr. Eng’s.
“I became familiar with his work last year when I conducted a piece of his for jazz orchestra at the Rhapsody 100 concert at UNCA, and I have loved his creative voice ever since,” says Eng. “This piece, Mom, makes me weep; it’s such a lovely, lyrical, reflective tribute to mothers and will be a particularly special part of the program the week before Mother’s Day. I’m excited to have Richard on piano and Will Boyd on saxophone. It will be such a treat.”
The inclusion of Beethoven’s symphony in the program now seems prescient. “When I planned this music a year ago, I couldn’t have imagined the poeticism in concluding our season with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, the Pastoral,” says Eng. “It is one of his few programmatic works, and it tells a story of the beauty of Nature but also the destruction it can cause and the feelings following such devastation. We will end our season on a hopeful, joyous note following the storm, represented musically but also embodied emotionally.”
BRO board president Deb Kenney expresses pride in WNC’s volunteer community orchestra. “We are thrilled that some of our musicians for this concert performed in the very first BRO concert 25 years ago, having performed continuously throughout those 25 years,” she says. “The BRO is truly of the community, for the community and succeeds to this day only by the community’s support.”
Eng stresses how unusual a first season it has been for her, with the BRO’s first concert postponed due to Helene. “I still very much feel like the ‘new’ music director and am eager to continue to get to know and work with the ensemble,” she says. With UNCA’s Lipinsky Auditorium undergoing renovations over the next two years, the BRO will be performing at different venues around Asheville. “It will be an exciting opportunity for us to reach new audiences,” says Eng.
UNCA’s Lipinsky Auditorium is located at 300 Library Lane, Asheville. Learn more at BlueRidgeOrchestra.org and on Facebook and Instagram, or call 828.782.3354.
