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PSO: Must Listen Music to Our Ears
PSO: Must Listen Music to Our Ears
By Laura Longley
The moment this issue of Country ZEST reaches you, open your phone or laptop, visit the website of the Piedmont Symphony Orchestra, and snap up your tickets for the PSO Holiday Concert “Exsultate!”
Set for Sunday, Dec. 8, at 3 p.m. at the Michael A. Hughes Center for the Arts at Highland School in Warrenton, this is a musical occasion designed to get even Ebenezer Scrooge into a holiday mood.
PSO music director and conductor Glenn Quader has programmed a delightfully eclectic concert that blends Mozart, traditional carols, and a special Piedmont premiere.
The concert’s featured artist is an audience favorite—Emily Casey, a versatile Irish-American soprano with a sparkling voice who has been making waves on the international opera scene. She specializes in the dramatic coloratura soprano and bel canto repertoire.
Casey will be performing five different traditional carols from Europe, said Quader. “Some of them are in German, one is in French. She’s also doing a couple of other pieces, including Mozart’s ‘Exsultate Jubilate’ and a unique rendition of ‘O Holy Night.’ Finally, she’ll perform a new work by guest conductor, cellist, and composer J. Thomas Mitchell.”
According to Quader, Mitchell has been presenting new works for several years in Frederick, Maryland. “Last season,” he said, “I invited him to Warrenton to premiere his works here with the PSO. They are new and fresh, and the audience enjoys them.
“In 2023, he premiered a work called ‘Kings of the East.’ He introduced the Magi in a caravan coming across the desert. He achieved that by giving all the cello players different sizes and types of bells you find on goats and cows and camels. It starts off with this jangling of one at a time, and then they start to come in all together as the caravan comes closer. The work is based on ‘We Three Kings.’ He took it and spun it around and made it ultra modern in some spots—but very easy on the ears!”
The PSO’s founding conductor, Michael A. Hughes, will narrate a musical setting of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”
Details: www.piedmontsymphony.org
