USU Symphony Orchestra Presents Annual Concerto Evening
Utah State University’s Department of Music in the Caine College of the Arts presents its annual USU Symphony Orchestra Concerto Evening Feb. 27 at 7:30 p.m. in the Kent Concert Hall of the Chase Fine Arts Center.
Guest conductor for the evening is Germán Augusto Gutiérrez, director of orchestras and associate professor of orchestral studies at Fort Worth’s Texas Christian University. He is director of TCU’s Latin American Music Center and the biennial Latin American Music Festival. Since 2000 he has also served as music director of the Youth Orchestra of Greater Fort Worth.
Concerto Evening will also feature six student soloists — top winners of the concerto competition held by the Music Department in December. The student performers include Dallin Bassett, piano; Lauren Belliston, piano; McKenzie Clawson, violin; Nathan Hauck, guitar; Jaron Putnam, baritone; and Corie Schofield, violin.
Concerto concerts pair solo musicians with the orchestra.
“The Beethoven concerto isn’t the Beethoven concerto without the orchestra,” said Schofield. “When this particular piece is played with an orchestra, it is more than a concerto; it’s another one of Beethoven’s symphonies.”
Schofield, on violin, will perform the first movement of Beethoven’s Concerto in D Major with the symphony orchestra.
Clawson, another student violinist, presents a piece by Mendelssohn.
“It’s amazing to be able to hear Mendelssohn’s genius in how he composed the music,” Clawson said when discussing the composer’s Concerto in E Minor. “There are parts of the piece where I’m playing a duet with the oboe, clarinets, first violins and even the timpani.”
Clawson is featured in the work’s first movement and said she loves the feeling of being able to soar across the grand sound of an entire symphony playing behind her.
Belliston, who is performing Saint-Saens’ Concerto no. 2 (first movement), also loves the feeling of being supported by an orchestra while playing a beautiful piece, and said she gets a huge adrenaline rush.
“As a pianist, I mostly perform solo works but concertos provide a great opportunity to play with other instrumentalists,” she said. “This is my fourth time performing a concerto with an orchestra and it is just as exciting and fun as the first time.”
Tickets for USU’s Concerto Evening are $10 adults, $8 seniors and youth, $5 USU faculty and staff and free for USU students with ID. For more information or tickets, contact the CCA Box Office in room 139-B of the Chase Fine Arts Center on USU’s campus, call 435-797-8022, or see the college’s Production Services website.
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Writer: Whitney Schulte, 435-797-9203, whitney.schulte@usu.edu
Contact: Denise Albiston, 435-797-1500, denise.albiston@usu.edu
USU's top student musicians and the USU Symphony Orchestra are featured in the annual Concerto Evening Feb. 27. The guest conductor for the evening is Germán Augusto Gutiérrez from Texas Christian University.
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