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Strings, Keys, Valves, and Mallets

Yme Woensdregt previews the upcoming season with the Symphony of the Kootenays.

Yme Woensdregt

Quick! What has 108 strings, 125 keys, 30 valves, several mallets, and a single baton?

If you guessed the Symphony of the Kootenays, you’d be right.

The Symphony, under Jeff Farragher’s direction, has lined up another season of exciting concerts and superb music–making for people of all ages and tastes. The music spans the 16th to the 21st century, and features our own symphony musicians as well as guest soloists.

The season opens on October 16 with a fanfare written by Edmonton’s Allan Gilliland. Throughout the season, the orchestra will be playing Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”, beginning with Autumn.

Amy Zanrosso is the soloist in Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto, and the concert comes to a close with the wonderfully melodic “Scheherazade” by Nikolai Rimsky–Korsakov.Our Christmas show falls on the weekend of December 3–4, and opens with Vivaldi’s “Winter”.

Our guest singer, the multi–talented Allison Girvan from Nelson, will sing songs of the season.

The joy continues with a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the television show, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. Come and listen … and even sing along!

The third concert takes place on February 11. It opens with Vivaldi’s “Spring”, a harbinger of warmer weather.

That’s followed by some of your favourite music from the movies. Some of the music is classical music and taken over by the movies—who can forget the thrilling “Ride of the Valkyries” in Apocalypse Now?

The rest of the music was written specifically for the movies, and features iconic themes from movies like James Bond, Mission Impossible and Jurassic Park.

It will be sure to set your toes tapping.The season closes with a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge, one of the most important battles of World War 1.

It opens with the final segment of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, “Summer”. This concert features local singers in the Symphony Choir singing “Spirit of England” by Edward Elgar which mourns the terrible loss of war, and also the sublime “Requiem” by Gabriel Fauré.

As Fauré himself wrote, the work “is dominated from beginning to end by a very human faith in eternal rest.”

This final concert of the season features three soloists, including Cranbrook’s own William Grossman who returns as the tenor soloist in “Spirit of England”.

It promises to be a remarkable season of music. Tickets are priced very reasonably. You can find more information on the website, http://sotk.ca/. You really don’t want to miss out.