Stellar season on tap at NH Symphony.
NASHUA, NH – Symphony NH Presents All Beethoven Concert, featuring guest conductor Roderick Cox and violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins on January 27th at 8 p.m.
Conductor Roderick Cox is recognized as “a trailblazer…a conductor who will be in the vanguard” (Minnesota Star Tribune). He currently serves as Associate Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, and has conducted with the Cleveland and Chineke! Orchestras, and Seattle and Santa Fe Symphonies. Violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins is renowned for her solo career, including her Broadway Fiddler on the Roof performance as “the versatile violinist who makes the music come alive…” (The New York Times).
Both Cox and Hall-Tompkins are pioneers in the world of music. Roderick Cox has established a reputation as a young talent, quickly rising through the ranks of top national orchestras and promoting diversity in the symphonic field. In an interview with NBC News, Cox says, “I think it’s important for people of different races and backgrounds to see themselves represented onstage… as our country continues to diversify, we as an orchestra have to diversify. Diversify our music choice, diversify our vendors, diversify our audience, diversify the musicians on the stage.”
Violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins’ career has also broken barriers, recently recognized by The New York Times as New Yorker of the Year for her work ranging from music videos featuring her own arrangements of Fiddler on the Roof to her organization Music Kitchen that brings professional musicians into New York City shelters and soup kitchens to perform. Hall-Tompkins will bring this program to the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter, performing for residents there on January 26th at 4:30 p.m.
The concert program features Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Third Symphony, titled “Eroica” or heroic. The two works on this program premiered within a year of each other, with the symphony arriving first in 1805, bursting onto the scene with its vigor and rhythmic drive. Both pieces embodied Beethoven’s new way of musical thinking, in marked contrast to their predecessors. Although Beethoven wrote only one Violin Concerto, its scope and musical language moves it firmly into the nineteenth century, in contrast with his earlier Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano which gestures backward in time in homage to Haydn. Similarly, while his Symphony No. 2 reflects traditional classical formality, Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) is purely Beethoven and no other, as described by Symphony NH Continuing Education Coordinator and Orchestra Bassist, Robert Hoffman.
Symphony NH, led by guest conductor Roderick Cox with violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins, will perform All Beethoven on January 27th at 8 p.m. at Keefe Center for the Arts, 117 Elm Street, Nashua, NH 03060. Tickets are $18 – $49 with senior discounts available. Student tickets are $10, and youth tickets for audience members ages 15 and under are always free with the purchase of an adult or senior ticket. Robert Hoffman will present his free pre-concert talk “Words on Music” at the Nashua Public Library, 2 Court Street, Nashua, on Thursday, January 25th at 5:30 pm. More information and tickets at www.symphonynh.org or (603) 595-9156.
