LYRICA Season Finale with the Lyrica Chamber Orchestra

Lyrica Chamber Music is proud to announce its 25^th Anniversary Season Finale on Sunday, April 22, 2012 at 3pm, as the Lyrica Chamber Orchestra will join forces with the Kent Place Chamber Choir to present the world premiere of two new compositions.

Piano Concerto and Four Nature Canticles are written by composers Alex Weston and Nancy Galbraith respectively, both of whom have strong ties to the New Jersey area.

Weston, a recent graduate of the Carnegie Mellon University School of Music, is also an alumnus of Chatham (NJ) High School and the first winner of Lyrica’s Young Composers Competition (2009).  Weston now lives and works in New York City, recently securing a prestigious internship with famed composer Philip Glass.  His three movement Piano Concerto will be premiered by the Lyrica Chamber Orchestra with pianist and co-artistic Director David Kaplan.

Nancy Galbraith resides in Pittsburgh, PA where she is Professor of Composition at Carnegie Mellon University. In a career that spans three decades, her works have been directed by some of the world's finest conductors, including Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Mariss Jansons, and Keith Lockhart.  Her catalogue is published by renowned Subito Music, located in Verona, NJ.

Lyrica commissioned Ms. Galbraith to compose Four Nature Canticles: a four-movement, 20-minute work scored for treble choir and chamber orchestra. The piece features texts by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and James Joyce, and will be sung by the accomplished Kent Place Chamber Choir, led by choral director Edel Thomas.