Paradise Symphony Orchestra offering a show for everyone

The Paradise Symphony Orchestra is presenting “A Musical Petting Zoo” on Sunday — but, there will be no animals.

In a first for the symphony, right before the intermission, kids will be invited by Dr. Lloyd Roby to the front of the Paradise Arts Performing Center. Some of the musicians will come off the stage and the children can touch the instruments as well as learn something about them.

It’s all part of a Paradise Symphony Orchestra event called “For Kids of all Ages” that includes a special reading of “Peter and the Wolf.”

During the petting, the orchestra will play “Colonel Bogey,” a unique military piece that became wildly popular with the British, soon crossing the Atlantic where Americans adopted it as a golf related piece.

In the Russian folk tale “Peter and the Wolf,” Sergei Prokofief used this narrated story to show off the orchestra and the sounds that it can make as Peter and friends go about expelling the wolf and making him restore their other friend, the duck, whom the wolf has swallowed whole. Wellknown North State Vocalist Holly Taylor will be the narrator for this performance. And The Northern California Ballet, Artistic Director Trudi Angel, will enhance “Peter” by dancing.

That’s just part of the program. There’s also a variety of pops and light classics, sure to please anyone young at heart.

A “Star Wars” medley launches the concert. Many critics believe the scores, written by John Williams, are almost perfect in their characterizations of the many “beings.” The medley will include many of these musical portraits.

Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” is familiar to most people because it has been used in so many other musical pieces and at numerous events. It was commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra during World War II as one of 18 patriotic pieces, each one honoring a part of the American war effort. It’s not a long piece, but it is stirring and powerful.

The “Sandpaper Ballet” sounds like an oxymoron, but it is a real, although unusual, ballet written for the San Francisco Symphony by Leroy Anderson in conjunction with choreographer Mark Morris. In reality, this piece is a tribute to vaudeville soft-shoe dancing and it actually sounds like sandpaper sanding at times.

“Pirates of the Caribbean” has inspired a wonderful Klaus Badelt soundtrack that evokes images of Captain Jack Sparrow and his maties swashbuckling their way across the Caribbean. The orchestra plays a stirring medley of “pirate” songs.

Tickets are $15, $12 for seniors, and children 17 and under are free. Tickets are available at ParadiseSymphony.org and at the door the day of the concert. The event begins at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 12 Paradise Performing Arts Center, 777 Nunnely Road in Paradise.