The UTC Symphony Orchestra will present a free concerto concert, open to the public, at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 12, in the UTC Fine Arts Center’s Roland Hayes Concert Hall.
The concert, which also will be available to watch via livestream, will feature four student concerto winners.
“Our concerto concert is one of the most challenging yet enjoyable concerts each year,” UTC Symphony Orchestra conductor Sandy Morris said. “The orchestra members, instead of being featured, get to accompany their talented fellow students who perform impressive solos that showcase their hard work and talent.”
The four featured UTC concerto students are:
- Senior trumpeter Meaghan Hibbs, a graduate of Chattanooga High School Center for Creative Arts. Hibbs is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in humanities (international concentration) with a minor in music performance.
- Junior bassoonist Marlee Sanders, who hails from Memphis (Bartlett High School). Sanders is pursuing a biology degree with minors in music performance and chemistry.
- Junior percussionist Logan Brown, who attended North Sand Mountain High School in Higdon, Alabama. Brown is pursuing an instrumental music performance degree.
- Sophomore mezzo-soprano Paige Bush, a graduate of Arlington (Tennessee) High School. Bush is a vocal music performance major.
“They are all very talented, work hard to perfect their performances and are very humble,” Morris said. “I’ve enjoyed working with Meaghan, Marlee and Logan during their time in orchestra, and I’m looking forward to making great music with Paige—an accomplished singer.”
The works being performed include:
- “Fantasy on Japanese Wood Prints” by Alan Hovhaness. This work uses the full forces of the orchestra, Morris said, contrasting soft passages with xylophone solo, strings and woodwinds in flowing unmetered passages with loud rhythmic sections using percussion and brass.
- “Trumpet Concerto in Eb Major, movement I” by Johann Hummel. “This iconic concerto is on every trumpeter’s ‘must learn’ list and is a delightful Classical period work,” Morris said of the concerto written in 1803.
- “Bassoon Concerto in F Major, movement III” by Carl Maria von Weber, a playful concerto movement composed near the beginning of the Romantic era of the 1800s.
- “Voi lo sapete, o mamma” from the opera “Cavalleria Rusticana” by Pietro Mascagni. “This aria is the emotional cry of a woman to her lover’s mother because she was seduced by him as revenge,” Morris said. “His fiancée had married another man while he was away with the military and then started an affair with him after she found out about the new woman in his life.”
The 50-member college/community orchestra includes University music majors and non-majors, UTC music faculty members, area music educators and other amateur and professional musicians from the region.
Bassoonist Marlee Sanders, a junior from Memphis, is one of four featured UTC Symphony Orchestra concerto students performing on Feb. 12 on the Roland Hayes Concert Hall stage. Photo by Angela Foster.