Free Orchestra Concert at Har Sinai Congregation

FREE

OWINGS MILLS, Md.—On Sunday, April 1, 2012, at 2 p.m. Har Sinai Congregation will present a performance by The Orchestra of St. John’s, Ronald Mutchnik, conductor, with virtuoso piano soloist Jeffrey Chappell. Funded by The Peggy and Yale Gordon Trust, concert admission and parking are free.

The Orchestra of St. John’s, an all-professional orchestra based in Ellicott City, Md., will perform the mid-Atlantic premier of The Alberta Concerto by Minuetta Kessler, who wrote more than 200 instrumental and vocal pieces during her lifetime, and Spirit of America by international award-winning, Baltimore-based composer Vivian Adelberg Rudow. The concert will also include The Marriage of Figaro-Overture by Mozart as well as Adagio for Strings by Barber.

“This year’s Gordon Trust concert at Har Sinai Congregation comes after two years of preparation. We’re uniting wonderful composers, including two Jewish women composers, with incredibly talented performers to present an exciting afternoon of classical music,” said Jean Brenner of the Gordon Trust Concert Committee at Har Sinai Congregation and Minuetta Kessler’s daughter.

Composer Minuetta Kessler was born in Russia and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. At age 5, she composed and performed her own piano pieces and, at age 15, received a scholarship to study performance and composition at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, where she later taught. She composed The Alberta Concerto in 1946 to depict the breath-taking beauty of her home, the Canadian Province of Alberta.

Composer Vivian Adelberg Rudow, winner of 25 ASCAP awards and two international prizes, was the first Maryland composer to have an orchestral piece performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Sergiu Comissiona conducting, in the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Her works are listed in seven books and journals. Love, Loss and Law, Music Documentaries was her first solo CD album and a second CD, soon to be released, will include Spirit of America, recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Adelberg Rudow’s music is performed around the world.

Pianist Jeffrey Chappell has performed throughout the United States in recitals and chamber music and has been a soloist with major symphony orchestras. He has performed concerts in Europe, Asia and Latin America. He is also a recording artist and an award-winning composer. A former student of Jane Allen, Eleanor Sokoloff at the Curtis Institute and Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Institute, Chappell is now on the faculties of Goucher College and The Levine School of Music.

Conductor and violinist Ronald Mutchnik founded The Orchestra of St. John’s, the only professional chamber orchestra in Howard County, Md. He has served as concertmaster and assistant concertmaster with the Maryland Symphony, National Chamber, Handel Choir, Columbia Pro Cantare Festival and Baltimore Chamber Orchestra.

For more information, contact Har Sinai Congregation at 410-654-9393. The synagogue is located at 2905 Walnut Ave. in Owings Mills.

(Listen to excerpts from the music on YouTube)

Har Sinai Congregation (www.harsinai-md.org) in Owings Mills, Md., is the oldest continuously Reform congregation in the United States. The spiritual leaders are Rabbi Benjamin Sharff and Cantor Robert Gerber. Stewart D. Sachs is president of the congregation.