Bernstein featured at Wallingford Symphony Sunday at 2:00

BERNSTEIN’S BIRTHDAY WITH THE WSO

The music of Leonard Bernstein, a serious composer of classical music with an independent jazzy streak, will comprise most of the program for the Wallingford Symphony Orchestra’s first concert of the season on Sunday (October 15) at 2:00 p.m. at the Paul Mellon Art Center, Choate Rosemary Hall.

The 100th anniversary of Bernstein’s birth, which is being observed in this season by orchestras throughout the country, provides the occasion for the concert, which will feature his work for the musical stage and film. Bernstein, who died in 1990 was acclaimed for his brilliant work as a conductor leading the New York Philharmonic, for his classical compositons, and for his blending of classical forms, jazz rhythms and popular melody in writing for the musical stage. The concert also includes the world premiere of Dovetail, a work by the ukulele master Jim Beloff of Meriden.

The orchestra, led by Music Director Philip T. Ventre, will open the program with the overture from Candide, an operetta performed in various revisions for more than 60 years. Bernstein’s music, of interest from the first, has persisted through those revisions. This will be followed by a suite from On the Town, a tale of three sailors on shore leave in New York City, including such songs as New York, New York; Lonely Town; and I Can Cook Too. Bernstein’s haunting score for the Academy Award-winning film On the Waterfront concludes the first part of the program.

Jim Beloff will solo on the ukulele as the orchestra plays his new work Dovetail .The final piece will be the Symphonic Dances from Bernstein’s popular West Side Story.

Ticket information is available on the Wallingford Symphony Orchestra website or from the Gallagher Travel Shoppe, 359 Center Street.