Music is meant to transport you, mind and soul.
For their upcoming Parksville concert “Peace and Pleasure,” the Nanaimo Chamber Orchestra will take you to places of the heart with Händel’s Baroque Concerto Grosso VI and John Williams’ modern A Prayer for Peace. As well, the program includes the evocative Impromptu by Jean Sibelius, Max Reger’s chromatic Weihnachten (Christmas) and American composer Arthur Foote’s light classical Suite in E Major.
According to a news release from the NCO, the concert will also feature bassoonist Katrina Russell playing Johann Neruda’s Concerto in C Major.
Originally from Edmonton, Russell is a specialist in historical performance.
She has played and recorded with many of the period instrument ensembles in Britain and Europe, including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Hanover Band, L’Orchestre de la Champs Elysees and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.
In late 2010 Katrina and her husband (British horn player Andrew Clark) relocated to the West Coast and have established themselves near Ladysmith, where they have a speciality brass-making workshop producing horns and trumpets.
Katrina is on faculty at the Nanaimo Conservatory of Music and in addition to returning to the U.K. to perform, makes regular appearances with the Vancouver Island Symphony as well as the Victoria Baroque Players, Pacific Baroque Orchestra and Early Music Vancouver.
The program will be presented Nov. 9 at 2:30 p.m. in Parksville’s St. Edmund’s Anglican Church. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 students, and are available at the Port Theatre Box Office in Nanaimo or at the venue door. Children under 12 are free.
For more information on the concert, visit the orchestra’s website nanaimochamberorchestra.com
—NEWS Staff/NCO