The Brockport Symphony Orchestra will present their “Erie Canal Celebration Concert” on Sunday, May 1 at 4 p.m. in the historic sanctuary at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 14 State Street in the Village of Brockport. Admission and parking are free, and donations to the orchestra and St. Luke’s and canned items for the Brockport Ecumenical Food Shelf will be gratefully accepted at the door.
Under the baton of music director Jonathan Allentoff, this concert features narrator Bill Andrews, William Hullfish & the Golden Eagle String Band, vocalist Mary Wojciechowski, and guest speaker Grace Carson.
The centerpiece of the program is the world premiere of “Songs of the Erie Canal for Narrator, String Band & Orchestra” by Allentoff and Hullfish with text by legendary Brockport author Mary Jane Holmes. Andrews, Vice-Mayor of Brockport, will recite excerpts from Holmes’ novels and the Smithsonian Gold Medal Artists of the Golden Eagle String Band will perform four canal songs alongside the orchestra. This new work will also feature a special introduction by Grace Carson, Brockport educator and author of “The Works of Mary Jane Holmes, A Brockport Union Catalog.”
Wojciechowski will sing “Today I Love Everybody” and “With the Sun Warm Upon Me” by Harold Arlen and Dorothy Fields from the 1953 Erie Canal themed movie musical entitled, “The Farmer Takes a Wife.” A graduate of Nazareth College and Temple University, she recently appeared as soloist at the Corning Museum of Glass and the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival.
The orchestra will also perform “Adagio cantabile from Symphony No. 92” (Oxford Celebration) by Joseph Haydn and “Dewitt Clinton’s Grand Canal March” by Richard Willis. Premiered by the West Point Band at the entrance of the first canal boat into the Hudson River in 1823, Hullfish has restored and arranged this work based on Willis’ original score housed in the Special Collections at Johns Hopkins University.
Following the concert, a dessert reception will take place in Parish Hall celebrating Dr. Heidi Macpherson’s Presidential Inauguration Weekend. For more information, visit www.brockportsymphony.org.
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