Berkshire Symphony Guest Conductor Andrew Massey leading the Middlebury College Orchestra

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – The Berkshire Symphony will feature student soloists from Williams College in a concert of works by Enescu, Bernstein, Rachmaninoff and Dvo?ák in Chapin Hall at Williams College on Friday, April 25, 2014, at 8 p.m. There is a pre-concert talk with guest conductor Andrew Massey and student soloists at 7:15 p.m. in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall, adjacent to the main venue. Both of these events are free and open to the public.

This gala concert in Chapin Hall is the final performance of the season for the Berkshire Symphony and features some of Williams’ finest music students. The student soloists are violist Lysander Jaffe ’14, playing Concertpiece for Viola and Orchestra by George Enescu; Claire Leyden ’16, soprano, singing Leonard Bernstein’s “Glitter and be Gay” from Candide; and pianist Joyce Lee ’17, performing the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, op. 18 by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The Berkshire Symphony will also present the world premiere of a work by Sato Matsui ’14, titled “Memorabilia.” The orchestra tops off this celebration of music and musicianship with a performance of Symphony No. 7 in D minor, op. 70, B. 141, by Antonín Dvorak.

The performers were selected in February by a panel of judges during the orchestra’s very competitive annual solo competition.

Guest conductor Andrew Massey grew up in England, studying music at Merton College, Oxford. Composing was his major focus at that time, writing music for Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral,” performed inside the medieval chapel at Merton, and for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “King Lear” in Ludlow Castle. At the same time he was conducting the Apollo Symphony Orchestra, presenting almost all the Mahler symphonies, as well as major works of Strauss, Stravinsky, Bartok, Debussy, etc. In 1978, Lorin Maazel appointed Massey Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. At this time he also worked with Olivier Messiaen in Paris. Since that time, Massey has been Resident Conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony, Associate Conductor of the New Orleans, and of the San Francisco Symphony.

Concert hotline: 413-597-3146