Guest Cellist Baldwin Joins SSO for 'Tchaikovsky and Friends' Saturday, May 14

SALISBURY, MD---The Salisbury Symphony Orchestra at Salisbury University concludes its 25th anniversary season with the concert “Tchaikovsky and Friends,” conducted by Dr. Jeffrey Schoyen, music director, on Saturday, May 14.

The culmination of SU’s “Memorable Melodies” spring music festival, the performance is 7:30 p.m. in Holloway Hall Auditorium.

Guest cellist Wesley Baldwin joins the orchestra on such favorite Tchaikovsky works as “Rococo Variations,” “Pezzo Cappricioso” and “Andante Cantabile.” Also on the program are Alexander Borodin’s Symphony No. 2  and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Overture on Russian Themes." Russian composers from the Romantic era, Tchaikovsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov sometimes found themselves at odds musically, but they produced works that helped define their country’s earliest role in Europe’s music scene.

The cellist for the James Piano Quartet, the resident ensemble at Sweet Briar College, VA, Baldwin has performed as a soloist and in chamber ensembles throughout the United States and Europe. He is a professor of cello at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Baldwin was the founder of the Plymouth String Quartet, with which he was a top prizewinner in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition at the University of Notre Dame and a finalist in the Paolo Borciani International String Quartet Competition in Reggio Emilia, Italy.

As principal cellist of the New World Symphony, Baldwin toured Japan, Scotland, England, Argentina and Brazil, and received the organization’s Community Board Award for artistic integrity and leadership. In the summers, he performs and teaches at several festivals. He also founded and directs the Tennessee Cello Workshop, an annual gathering of roughly 100 cellists from across the United States, held each February.

Sponsored by Pepsi Bottling Ventures and the SU collegiate chapter of MENC: The National Association for Music Education, admission to the SSO concert is $20, $15 for seniors, $5 for children 12 and under. For tickets visit www.salisburysymphonyorchestra.org. A pre-concert talk by Lyubov Paskova, piano faculty in the Department of Music, is 6:30 p.m. in the Great Hall.  In addition, a free concert study guide for Symphony No. 2 is available on the SSO Web site.

A parking shuttle runs from the Guerrieri University Center parking lot off Dogwood Drive to Holloway Hall from 6:30-7:30 p.m. and returns following the performance.

The Local Owner Restaurant Association offers 10 percent off the entire check at participating restaurants Friday-Sunday, May 13-15, with an SSO ticket or stub. For a list of restaurants visit www.lorarestaurants.org. Restaurant 213 in Fruitland, MD, offers a prix fixe dinner for SSO patrons with tickets from Friday-Saturday, May 13-14.

For more information call 410-548-5587 or visit the SSO Web site at www.salisburysymphonyorchestra.org.