String Chamber Orchestra Concert to Feature Soloists at Mansfield University
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The Mansfield University String Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Kenneth Sarch, will perform in concert on Friday, March 30, 8
p.m. in Steadman Theatre. The concert is free and open to the public.
The orchestra will perform a program featuring the Mozart Symphony No. 29in A Major, an early work featuring the string orchestra with oboes and horns. Mozart wrote this symphony when he was 18 years old
“One of the goals of the university String Chamber Orchestra is to provide opportunities for students to perform solo with orchestra,” Sarch said. “This concert features eight students each playing a movement from a concerto by Bach, Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, J.C. Bach and Telemann.”
Soloists for this concert will include cellists Kelsey Boltz, (sophomore from Shillington, PA) and Joshua Malave (sophomore from Montdale, PA); violinists Caroline Dolan (freshman from Horseheads, NY), Erin Kearney (sophomore from Scranton, PA), Justin Stark (junior from Binghamton, NY), and Erinn Dobbins (December graduate from Etters, PA), Alyssa Wroblewski (freshman from Milford, PA) and Jeremy Spielman (senior from Ambler, PA).
The program will end with a contemporary work by Shirl Atwell titled Drifen.
The MU String Chamber Orchestra is an ensemble comprised of 12 string players from the Mansfield Music Department. It was founded by Sarch in 2008. The ensemble has been invited to perform at the Gmeiner Art Museum in Wellsboro, at Lycoming College Honors Hall, Corning Community College Concert Series and for the Thursday morning Music Club at the Clemens Center in Elmira.
Sarch is professor of Violin and Viola at MU. He has conducted district, regional and state orchestra festivals in several states. This past January he returned to Panama for the tenth time to conduct the Panama National Youth Orchestra. Earlier this month, Sarch performed as violin soloist with the Williamsport Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra invited Sarch to perform as a tribute for his 14 years as concertmaster of the Williamsport Symphony.
He has also conducted the String Orchestra of the Jordan National Music Conservatory, the Symphony of the Jordan Armed Forces, and the CMI Youth Orchestra in Brazil. Sarch has received four USIA Arts America Grants to Panama, Brazil, Israel and Jordan and two Fulbright Scholar Awards to Brazil and Bolivia. In Bolivia he formed a new orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica Juvenil de Santa Cruz, and served as its first conductor.
