The Concord Orchestra presents “Poetry without Words”

The Concord Orchestra presents “Poetry without Words” at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 26 and on Sunday, March 27 at 2:00 p.m.  Orchestra members Nancy McCarthy and Alexia Schulz live in Bedford.

The orchestra, directed by Filippo Ciabatti, performs George Walker’s Lyric for Strings, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8.   Performances take place at the Performing Arts Center at 51 Walden, Concord.   A pre-concert talk by the conductor is scheduled for Saturday at 7:00 p.m.  All concerts of the 2021-2022 Concord Orchestra season are planned and directed by finalists auditioning for the position of Music Director.

A native of Florence, Italy, Filippo Ciabatti is the Music Director of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, the Dartmouth Opera Lab, and the Interim Music Director of the Dartmouth’s Choral Ensembles.

In 2018-2019, he led the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra in an Italian tour in collaboration with the Orchestra Toscana dei Conservatori in prominent venues and festivals, including the Puccini Days in Lucca. Other highlights of the season include an all-Beethoven concert with Israeli pianist Sally Pinkas, and a collaboration with the NPR show “From The Top”, hosted by American pianist Jeremy Denk. In 2020, Mr. Ciabatti conducted the world premiere of a new secular oratorio composed by the renowned jazz composer Taylor Ho Bynum and has collaborated on a project with the Martha Graham Dance Company.

Mr. Ciabatti holds degrees in piano, choral conducting, and orchestral conducting from Italy and the United States.

This season, the Concord Orchestra features several young performers who participated in the annual young artist competition. The competition is open to musicians of high school age or younger who live in eastern Massachusetts. This season the winners were chosen by a panel of orchestra members and Eric Culver, consulting conductor.  Winners of this season’s competition will be soloists at the March and May concerts.

Katherine E Liu, 17, winner of the young artist competition, performs Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2.  Ms. Liu started her musical studies at age three and performed publicly at Boston’s Steinway Hall one year later. She has received top prizes in numerous piano competitions, including Grand Prize at the VI Chopin International Piano Competition in Connecticut, the Soloists of New England Competition, and First Prizes at the III Krystian Tkaczewski International Piano Competition, the Steinway Society Piano Competition, 2019 NEC Preparatory Concerto Competition, the 2020 Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition for Young Pianists, the 2019 Rosewood Fanning International Piano Competition, and the 2021 Lowell Philharmonic Concerto Competition, among many others.  Katherine has performed with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall as a Grand Prize winner of the Fidelity Investments Young Artists Competition.

Pre-concert recitals featuring competition honorees precede the concerts on Saturday and Sunday.  On Saturday night at 7:15 p.m., pianist Naomi Yamaguchi performs, and on Sunday afternoon at 1:15 p.m. cellist Andrew Kim performs.

This program is supported in part by grants from the Acton-Boxborough, Bedford, Carlisle, and Concord Cultural Councils, local agencies which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

Tickets for adults and seniors are $25.  Admission for youth under 18 is free.

For tickets and information, call 978-369-4967 or visit www.concordorchestra.com.