The Gustavus Symphony Orchestra and Conductor Ruth Lin
The Gustavus Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Conductor Ruth Lin, will present the Department of Music’s season finale with a performance in Christ Chapel on Saturday, May 28 at 8:00 p.m. The winners of the 2011 Gustavus Concerto/Aria Competition, violinist Taylor Frey ’13, baritone Christopher Hall ’11 and flutist Antonio Herbert ’13, will join Dr. Lin and the members of the symphony for this performance. The symphony’s final performance of the year is free and open to the public.
The Gustavus Concerto/Aria Competition is a juried competition sponsored annually by the Gustavus Department of Music and is open to any student studying privately with a member of the department. Frey, Hall and Herbert were selected to perform from a large number of entrants in the competition.
Conductor Lin and the Gustavus Symphony Orchestra will open Saturday evening’s performance in Christ Chapel with the Allegro moderato and Andante con moto movements from Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B minor, better known as Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony. Following the opening selection, flutist Antonio Herbert, a sophomore elementary education major and music minor from Kissimmee, Florida, will join the symphony and perform Antonio Vivaldi’s Flute Concerto in D Major, Op. 10, No. 3.
Senior baritone Christopher Hall, a native of Kenai, Alaska with a major in biology and a minor in music, will next join the symphony on the stage to perform the Toreador Song from the opera Carmen by Georges Bizet, a work Hall performed with piano on his senior recital on May 15. For the final work on Saturday’s program, Taylor Frey, violin, will follow Hall and join the symphony to conclude the season finale with a performance of the Concerto in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 47 by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Like Hall, Frey is a native of Alaska (Fairbanks) with a major in biology and a minor in music.
With this performance, Conductor Ruth Lin concludes her first year as a member of the Gustavus Department of Music where she serves as the Conductor of the Gustavus Symphony Orchestra and teaches first-year Music Theory and Basic Conducting. She comes to Gustavus from Iowa State University where she served as the Director of Orchestral Activities from 2007 to 2009. She earned her Bachelor, Masters and Doctoral degrees in orchestral conducting at Northwestern University, studying under Maestro Victor Yampolsky. While working on her undergraduate degree, Lin studied piano with Alan Chow and had the opportunity to perform Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra as the Concerto Competition Winner.
Saturday’s season finale featuring the Gustavus Symphony Orchestra, Conductor Ruth Lin and the winners of the 2011 Gustavus Concerto/Aria Competition will begin at 8:00 p.m. in Christ Chapel. Admission is free and the public is warmly invited to attend.