Annual "Young Artists Concert" at Andrews

Saturday, Jan. 26 at the Howard Performing Arts Center

Chris Wild conducts the Andrews University Symphony Orchestra (Photo by Alistair Clarke, University Communication student photographer)

On Saturday, Jan. 26, at 8 p.m., the Andrews University Symphony Orchestra is pleased to continue its annual Young Artists Concert at the Howard Performing Arts Center on the campus of Andrews University. This program will showcase students who have been selected as winners of the Department of Music’s Young Artist Competition.

The Young Artist Competition was a culmination for students of selecting their solos, practicing for multiple months, committing their music to memory and then performing their solos for music faculty. Unsurprisingly, many talented and deserving students auditioned, and it was a difficult process to select only six students to perform their solos with the Symphony Orchestra this month.

Katharina Burghardt will open the concert with a dramatic recitative and aria from Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni,” singing the role of Donna Elvira. Katharina is completing an undergraduate degree specializing in voice and music education and hails from New York state.

Following Katharina will be a wealth of violin solos, representing a variety of styles, colors and speeds. The first movement of Camille Saint-Saëns’ powerful “Violin Concerto No. 3” will be performed by Jade McClellan, an undergraduate violin student from Georgia. Then Simon Luke Brown, a freshman violinist from Oklahoma, will perform the first movement of Sergei Prokofiev’s adventurous “Violin Concerto No. 2.” That will be followed by the first movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s gorgeous “Violin Concerto,” performed by Stephanie Guimaraes, a graduate student from Brazil. Closing out the first half of the concert will be Jeremy Myung, an undergraduate violinist from California, performing the breathtaking “Finale” from Peter Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto."

Following intermission, undergraduate pianist Emily Jurek will perform the first movement of Mozart’s divine “Piano Concerto No. 20.” After Emily’s performance, all members of the Andrews University Symphony Orchestra will join forces to perform Johannes Brahms’ celebrative “Academic Festival Overture” under the baton of Edgar Luna Torres, a graduate student in orchestral conducting from Mexico. Brahms composed his overture in 1880 as a musical offering for the University of Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), which had decided to award Brahms an honorary doctorate degree in philosophy.

There are no tickets required for this concert. For more information please visit howard.andrews.edu or call the Howard Box Office at 269-471-3560.