Princeton Festival Enters Final Week

The Princeton Festival offers a Baroque Orchestra concert, an all-Chopin piano recital by award-winning artist Fei-Fei Dong and both a choral concert of 18th century music and a performance of traditional Indian music and dance by Pradhanica in its final week.

The Baroque Orchestra concert takes place on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in Miller Chapel at the Princeton Theological Seminary. Under the leadership of concertmaster Juan Carlos Zamudio, the orchestra will play a program of Heinrich Biber, Georg Muffat, Handel, and Bach on period instruments, as the works were heard in the late 17th and 18th centuries.

The Orchestra will also accompany a Choral Concert on Saturday, June 17 at 4 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Princeton.

The program will again be 18th century music with works of Bach, Handel, and Haydn, and will be conducted by eight different conductors, all of whom will have just completed an eight-day master class in conducting under the direction of Dr. Jan Harrington, renowned conductor and educator.

The Chopin piano recital takes place on Friday in Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall, Princeton University at 8 p.m. The recital is conducted by Fei-Fei Dong, a finalist in the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and holder of both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Juilliard.

She made her solo recital debut in Alice Tully Hall in 2014 as winner of Juilliard’s 33rd annual William Petscheck Recital Award. She has appeared in the Aspen Music Festival and with a number of orchestras across the country, and in China and Europe. There is a free pre-concert interview with Fei-Fei Dong at 6:45 p.m. in Taplin Auditorium.

It is the dynamic rhythm of the drummers and the spins and footwork of the dancers that characterizes Kathak, traditional northern Indian dance and music. Kathak means “to tell a story.” The Pradhanica ensemble of drummers and dancers will tell a colorful and arresting story in a program composed by rhythm and tabla maestro Pandit Divyang Vakil and choreographed by lead dancer Jin Won on Saturday, June 27, 8 p.m. in Berlind Theatre at the McCarter Center for the Performing Arts.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee continues with performances on June 25, 26, and 27 at 8 p.m. and June 28 at 4 p.m. at 185 Nassau Street. The production is directed by Melssia Firlit.

The final performance of The Marriage of Figaro is on Sunday, June 28, 3 p.m. at McCarter Theater.

The Festival’s lecture series wraps up on Thursday, June 25, with a lecture on “Figaro, a New Opera Hero” by Marianne Grey, Princeton University Art Museum docent, in Princeton Public Library at 7:30 p.m. Grey describes how the world of social and political change at the time of Figaro was illustrated by the art of the time.

For more information and a link to ticket sales (handled by McCarter Theatre), visit www.princetonfestival.org. To purchase tickets by phone, call McCarter Theatre at 609-258-2787.

The attached image was provided by the Princeton Festival.