September 24, 2018
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Signature Music Paired with Signature Beer: Richmond Symphony’s Rush Hour Concert at Hardywood with Works by Mozart, Ives, Beethoven, and More

Thursday, October 4, 2018 at 6:30pm
Hardywood Park Craft Brewery

September 24, 2018 – Richmond, Virginia: Welcome fall with the Richmond Symphony at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery for the first Rush Hour concert of the 2018-19 Season on Thursday, October 4 at 6:30pm. Hit the food trucks, enjoy one of Hardywood’s signature craft beers, and settle in for outstanding selections from pieces by Mozart, Ives, Beethoven, and more. This casual 60-minute concert will be led by conductor Steven Smith in Hardywood’s newly renovated tasting room, now offering even more space to fill with Symphony notes and audience seats!

Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio is a great example of 1700’s genre-bending. The composer included several “Janissary” instruments in the piece: piccolo, drums, cymbals, and triangles. A classical era composer including Janissary music in a work, would be like a modern composer throwing some Bluegrass music into a piece for fun.

Steeped in the musical traditions of the Near East and trained in western concert music and jazz, Syrian-American Kareem Roustom is a musically bilingual composer. Dabke is an arrangement of the third movement of his work, A Voice Exclaiming, and is influenced by folk music from Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Dabke is a combination of folk line and circle dancing, often performed during celebratory occasions. This movement is based on a six beat dabke rhythm called sudaasi .

Today, we see Charles Ives as a brilliant, eccentric, and little understood anomaly of American music. Ives wrote his Country Band March while still in his twenties, using his “collage” technique of layering unrelated bits of music over each other, including Arkansas Traveler, Battle Cry of Freedom, The Girl I Left Behind Me, London Bridge, My Old Kentucky Home, Violets, Yankee Doodle, May Day Waltz, Semper Fidelis, and more.

Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 in G Major is a marvel of wit, seriousness, simplicity, and complexity woven into a single work. The great Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon calls the last movement “one of the most intricately composed, yet brilliant sounding, movements in the [works] of Haydn.”

Beethoven’s “Turkish March” from the The Ruins of Athens, Opus 113 was written as a set of incidental music to a play by A. von Kotzebue. It is by far the most well-known of the movements, setting the scene for a ceremonial theatre opening. The piece is yet another example the growing influence of Turkish music, brought to Europe by the crusaders.

Our Rush Hour concerts tend to sell out, so purchase your tickets early! Cover charge is $15 with limited seating available. Tickets can be purchased online at richmondsymphony.com or by calling 1.800.514.ETIX. A limited number of tickets will be available for purchase at the door beginning 90 minutes before the concert.

Thursday, October 4, 2018 at 6:30 PM

Richmond Symphony

Metro Collection Series 1
Steven Smith, conductor

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About the Richmond Symphony:

Celebrating its 60th Anniversary Season in 2017/18, the Richmond Symphony is the largest performing arts organization in Central Virginia, and its reach extends throughout the Metro Richmond region and across the Commonwealth from its home downtown in the Dominion Energy Center for the Performing Arts. The organization includes an orchestra of more than 70 professional musicians, the 150-voice Richmond Symphony Chorus and over 260 students in the four ensembles in the Richmond Symphony Youth Orchestra Program. Each season, more than 200,000 people enjoy its live concerts and radio broadcasts. The Richmond Symphony also provides inspirational and immersive educational programming for over 55,000 students and teachers each year.

Its 40-week season (from September through June, plus an annual July 4th concert and summer concert series) includes the following series and programs under the headings of Classics, Currents and Community: Masterworks, Pops, Metro Collection, Casual Fridays, LolliPops, Rush Hour, Discovery, Come & Play, Messiah, Big Tent community festivals, and annual contracts with Richmond Ballet and Virginia Opera. The Richmond Symphony was recently named as one of 21 American orchestras selected as a leader in orchestra innovation by the League of American Orchestras through its Futures Fund Initiative. The Richmond Symphony is partially funded by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Contacts:
Erin Frye
Marketing and PR Manager
p. 804.788.4717 ext. 121
e. efrye@richmondsymphony.com

Scott Dodson
Director of Advancement and Patron Communications
p. 804.788.4717 ext. 120
e. sdodson@richmondsymphony.com