Fishers Chamber Orchestra will present a Baroque Festival on Saturday, September 20 at 7:30 p.m. at The Promise Church in Fishers. Under the direction of Dr. Keith Kunda, Music Director of Fishers Music Works, the program includes music by Johan Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, William Boyce, and Antonio Vivaldi.
The program will open with Boyce’s Symphony No. 5, a festive three-movement work originally written as an overture to Ode to St. Cecilia. Next on the program is the first of Bach’s famous Brandenburg concertos, featuring Larry Purdue and Symantha Ballensky on french horn. Guest vocalists Eric Wickens and Dr. Lisa Dawson will perform arias from Handel’s oratorios Messiah and Samson and from Vivaldi’s Gloria.
The second half of the program opens with Stölzel’s Concerto Grosso a Quattro Chori (Concerto Grosso for four choruses). This three-movement concerto divides the orchestra into four “choruses” of instruments: a trumpet trio, a second trumpet trio, an oboe trio, and a string/flute ensemble. The use of a total of six trumpets has resulted in the work being given the alternate title of Concerto for 6 Trumpets and Orchestra. The demands of assembling six Baroque trumpet players result in this work being rarely performed, and the opportunity to hear this outstanding piece of music is a rare treat.
The program will conclude with Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, a suite written originally for wind band and later re-scored by Handel himself for orchestra. The premiere performance, which of course included a spectacular fireworks display, was attended by over 12,000 people. This suite and Handel’s Water Music are two of his most loved compositions for orchestra.
Tickets for the concert can be purchased at the door or online at FishersMusicWorks.org. Discounts are available for advance purchases and also for families (parents/children) purchasing as a group. The concert is the second by Fishers new chamber orchestra, following a successful debut in March of this year.
Fishers Music Works is a not-for-profit music organization whose mission is to sponsor professional and semi-professional ensembles in the Town of Fishers and to provide educational opportunities that revolve around great music of the present and the past.
