Plainfield Symphony 97th Season Concert Sondheim Tonight!
The Plainfield Symphony once again brings its audience to Broadway in the upcoming November 19, 2016 concert under the baton of Maestro Charles Prince. The program entitled “Sondheim Tonight!” will feature selections from a number of the Broadway shows and other works of legendary Stephen Sondheim, regarded by many as the most highly regarded composer/lyricist for the musical theater of his generation. The program will also feature the world premiere of a Bernstein musical orchestrated as a rhapsody for solo violin and orchestra.
Born in 1930, Stephen Sondheim is both an Academy Award and Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of numerous Grammy and Tony awards as well as other honors. His early mentor was lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. Charles Prince has chosen songs that span Sondheim’s career from the Broadway stage to television to the movies, beginning with the show that should have marked his Broadway debut as a composer/lyricist, Saturday Night (1954). Instead it became Sondheim’s audition piece that got him the job of lyricist for West Side Story. Sondheim has collaborated as composer/lyricist with legendary producer/director Hal Prince on seven musicals beginning with the 1970 concept musical Company. From that association will be presented selections from Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd (1979) and Merrily We Roll Along (1981). Other works will include songs from Anyone Can Whistle (1964), the 1960 television musical Evening Primrose and Sunday in the Park with George, the 1984 show that evokes in music the painter Georges Seurat’s pointillism. Film score selections from the 1974 French film Stavisky will also be heard.
The concert also features the world premiere of On the Town Rhapsody, for solo violin and orchestra with Evelyn Estava as soloist. The work, based on the 1944 musical with music by Bernstein, has been arranged and orchestrated by Charlie Harmon, Bernstein’s former assistant. The story concerns three American sailors on a 24-hour shore leave in New York City during wartime 1944.
We are also extremely privileged to have four amazing Broadway and stage vocal soloists joining us. Elizabeth Stanley, a graduate of Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music, is a veteran of Broadway including several Sondheim revivals. She has also wowed audiences with her vocally versatile concert performances. Ron Raines is an American actor best known for his role as Alan Spaulding on the television soap opera Guiding Light. Raines is a 2012 Tony Award nominee for the acclaimed production of Sondheim’s Follies in which he starred opposite Bernadette Peters. He has performed in numerous musicals on Broadway and around the country and has appeared in concert with symphony orchestras. Kerstin Anderson is an American stage actress and singer currently studying at Pace University in pursuit of a BFA in Musical Theater. She starred as Maria Von Trapp in the 2015 US national tour of The Sound of Music. Adam Levy, a recent graduate of Pace University’s BFA Musical Theatre program, earned his Equity card playing Mendel in Fiddler on the Roof in St. Louis and has appeared in a number of shows.
The Plainfield Symphony is New Jersey’s oldest community symphony and the third oldest in the country. Tickets may be purchased at www.plainfieldsymphony.org or at the concert.
Concerts are held at Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church, located at 716 Watchung Avenue in Plainfield.
