MUSIC

On Saturday, May 7, the Lee College Performing Arts Center (PAC) will echo with the fiery melodies of forbidden love, jealousy, and joy as the Baytown Symphony Orchestra (BSO) presents the final installment of the 2010-2011 Sciolto season, the Student Soloists Concert.

Sponsored in part by the City of Baytown’s hotel and motel taxing program, the upcoming concert will feature standard orchestral titles performed under the direction of Maestro Dennis Eichler, with special performances by local students Sarah Johnson and Andra Valerie Steele.

The evening’s performance will feature selections including Emanuel Chabrier’s Spanish Raphsody, and John Williams’ Liberty Fanfare, as well as Georges Bizet’s Suite No. 1, excerpted from the opera Carmen, and Giuseppe Verdi’s Overture to the opera Sicilian Vespers.

Additionally, violinist Johnson will perform the Presto movement of G.P. Telemann’s Concerto in G Major. Pianist Steele will perform the Allegro movement of Mozart’s Concerto for Piano in B flat Major. Both students were selected to perform with the orchestra after winning a recent juried concerto competition.

Johnson, a senior at Ross S. Sterling High School, has played the viola under the direction of Stuart Eisen for seven years. Additionally, she has also studied privately with Laura Tompkins, has been a Region Z Orchestra member for six years, has been named Outstanding Student of the Year for three consecutive seasons, and has won numerous Division I solo ensemble awards. Johnson plays percussion in the Ross S. Sterling Marching band, and also enjoys playing the piano, guitar, mandolin and ukulele in her spare time.  She plans to attend Lee College in the fall of 2011 and transfer to Baylor University, where she will major in Music.

Steele, an accomplished violinist and senior at Robert E. Lee High School, has studied piano under Nedra Bradley for 12 years. She began performing with the orchestra’s violin section as a high school sophomore and currently performs as a concertmaster in the Robert E. Lee Orchestra. Additionally, Steele has earned a place in the state UIL solo and ensemble competitions for four consecutive years, and earned six medals.  Steele is also a member of Lee’s academic team and has competed in Poetry, Prose and Number Sense. She plans to study Multimedia Journalism and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin next fall.

The Baytown Symphony Orchestra’s final 2010-2011 concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Lee College PAC Auditorium. As a courtesy to musicians and audience members, the Baytown Symphony Orchestra’s Board of Directors asks that children under the age of seven not attend concerts.