Symphony to welcome summer with concert

The Tehachapi Symphony, directed by Dr. David Newby, will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday, May 19 at Country Oaks Baptist Church, 20915 Schout Road. The concert will also be livestreamed on YouTube.

The concert will feature Samuel Taylor-Coleridge Hiawatha’s “Wedding Feast” with the Tehachapi Symphonic Chorus, under the direction of Sandra Adams and Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 in E Minor (“From the New World”).

This year’s Young Artist Competition winner, violinist Benjamin Roh, will perform the third movement of the Bruch “Violin Concerto.”

Hiawatha’s “Wedding Feast” is based on part of “The Song of Hiawatha” by American poet Henry

Wadsworth Longfellow. Samuel Taylor-Coleridge had just graduated from the Royal College of Music in London, at 22 years old, when he completed the piece. Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast premiered on Nov. 12, 1898, becoming an instant success.

Antonin Dvorak was born near Prague in 1841. He went to New York in 1892 to oversee the National Conservatory of Music, founded by Jeanette Thurber, who hoped Dvorak would influence young American composers to discover their national sound. The Dvorak symphony retains the European style with new themes meant to sound “American.” Max Bruch was a respected conductor, composer and teacher. He began composing when he was 11 and by the time he was 24, he had produced a symphony and string quartet. Although he composed more than 200 pieces, the “Violin Concerto” is Bruch’s most famous work.

Following the concert, audience members may meet the Young Artist competition winner, as well as the symphony and chorus directors and musicians.

Admission is always free. For information, call 661-821-7511 or go to tehachapiorchestra.com.