By Natasha Anderson
The Blue Ridge Orchestra (BRO) begins its 2023-2024 season with The Well-Tempered Wizard, a Halloween-themed concert presented on Saturday, October 28, in Charles Beall Auditorium at Haywood Community College (HCC) in Clyde, and on Sunday, October 29, in Lipinsky Auditorium at UNC Asheville. Both concerts begin at 3 p.m. Audience members are encouraged to don costumes to add to the fun of these family-friendly performances.
“The Well-Tempered Wizard provides a wonderful opportunity to introduce youngsters to the orchestra with an afternoon of fun music and a chance to dress up,” says BRO music director Milton Crotts. “I look forward to sharing the excitement of symphonic sound with concertgoers of all ages.”
From the opening chords of Bach’s celebrated Toccata and Fugue in D Minor to the closing strains from the score of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Crotts has designed a program that evokes the spirit of Halloween. Works from the classical music world—Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture, Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre and Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King—are complemented by selections from Broadway’s Wicked and The Phantom of the Opera.
Featured artists for the program include Paula Sisson Akbar on violin and Tinder Burris on violoncello. Akbar has played in the Oregon, New Haven and Baltimore Symphonies and the Kennedy Center Opera/Ballet Orchestra. In 2016 she retired from the National Symphony Orchestra’s first violin section after 24 years. Burris recently retired from Miami-Dade County Public Schools as the orchestra director of Southwood Middle School Center for the Performing Arts.
The performance at Charles Beall Auditorium is one of two to be held there this season as an extension of BRO’s collaboration with HCC. This is central to the ensemble’s mission of community outreach.
“Performing at the college provides the BRO with an opportunity to bring great symphonic music to a wider WNC audience,” says BRO president Deb Kenney. “After a performance there in May of 2023, a concertgoer exclaimed that it was the first time she had heard live symphonic music in 20 years, as she could no longer make the drive to Asheville.”
One hundred percent of ticket sales go directly to support a variety of individual Haywood Community College students’ needs.
Tickets for the October 28 concert are $25 general admission, $15 for students and free for children under age five. Tickets for the
October 29 concert are $20 general admission, $15 for Friends of the Orchestra, $5 for students and free for children six and under. Learn more and purchase tickets at BlueRidgeOrchestra.org or by calling 828.782.3354. Follow the BRO on Facebook and Instagram.
