April 19, 2004

SIUC to host Chicago Chamber Orchestra

by K.C. Jaehnig

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- The Chicago Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Music Director Designate Edward Benyas of the Southern Illinois University Carbondale School of Music will present a concert of music by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 23, in Shryock Auditorium.

The concert by Chicago's second-oldest orchestra wraps up this year's Southern Illinois Symphony Series and will include soloists from the SIUC music faculty.

Robert Allison will perform Franz Joseph Haydn's popular Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major in the first half of the program, which will include a rare performance of W.A. Mozart's Concerto in F Major for Three Pianos, K. 242, featuring Wilfred Delphin, Heidi Williams and Kara Benyas. In the program's second half, Edward Benyas will conduct Ludwig von Beethoven's Third Symphony, the "Eroica." This 45-minute orchestral standard includes the famous "Funeral March" as its slow movement.

General admission tickets cost $21; people 55 and older and children 15 and younger pay $15.

The 52-year-old Chicago Chamber Orchestra has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, for radio and television broadcasts and on commercial recordings. Its repertoire of nearly 5,000 compositions from the Baroque to the present and the diversity of soloists drawn from its own ranks, including new as well as established artists of international renown, has drawn universal praise, including four ASCAP awards, awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and the Orchestra of the Year award from the Illinois Council of Orchestras.

For more information about the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, visit the group's Web site at http://www.chicagochamberorchestra.org.

Expanding cultural outreach efforts is among the goals of Southern@150, the blueprint for the development of the University by the time it celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2019.