“For its 2019 Independence Day tour, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra will showcase composers who set America to music, including Gershwin, Joplin, Bernstein, Copland, and … John Williams,” writes Jim Lowe in Tuesday’s (7/2) Rutland Herald (VT). “ ‘We’re opening up the program with Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, and I can’t think of a better piece to open an American program,’ explains [guest] conductor Sharon Lavery. The VSO’s annual Summer Festival Tour, July 1-7, ‘Strike Up the Orchestra!’ takes the state’s professional symphony orchestra to seven Vermont communities for summer outdoor concerts, with picnicking and all the trimmings: Chittenden, Manchester … Grafton, Shelburne, South Pomfret, Randolph and Stowe. Lavery … created the program…. VSO principal clarinetist Kelli O’Connor … will perform Artie Shaw’s Clarinet Concerto…. To close the concert and bring on the fireworks display, what else but the rousing part of Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’? ‘What every American orchestra all over the country uses to celebrate their Independence Day was written by a Russian composer about a war we had nothing to do with,’ Lavery said. ‘But it says it all, and it’s the perfect way to end an outdoor concert.’ ”
Posted July 3, 2019
