The West Island Youth Symphony Orchestra launches its 30th Anniversary season

The opening concert of the West Island Youth Symphony Orchestra’s 30^th Anniversary season will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 14, at Saint Joachim Church, 2 rue Ste-Anne in Pointe-Claire.

Entitled “Meister & Maître”, this concert will feature masterpieces by five of the greatest German and French composers: Wagner’s Die Meistersinger Overture, the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony no. 5, the Hungarian March from La Damnation de Faust by Berlioz, Brahms’ First Symphony, and Debussy’s Rhapsodie for clarinet and orchestra, which will feature as soloist the orchestra’s principal clarinetist, Noah Century.

The concert will be conducted by WIYSO Artistic Director Stewart Grant. Individual tickets for this concert are priced at $20 for general admission and $10 for students and senior citizens.

Subscriptions are also available for $50 and $25 for the Orchestra’s three-concert series, which also includes concerts on Saturday, February 27, at Ste-Geneviève Church, and on Saturday, May 14, in the Lindsay Place High School Auditorium.

The West Island Youth Symphony Orchestra has an ambitious program scheduled for its
30th Anniversary Season.

This year, the orchestra’s annual benefit Christmas Concert for West Island Community Shares will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, December 5 at the Salle Pauline-Julien. It will feature dancers from Ballet Montréal, who will perform the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Waltz of the Flowers from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, as well as the beloved Air and two dances from the Orchestral Suite no. 3 by Bach.

The February 27 “Musical Tales” concert will include Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. The soloist will be Nicholas Miller, who will perform the first movement of Eric Ewazen’s Concerto for Bass Trombone.

The May 14 “Spring Concert” will draw the series to a close with Respighi’s Pines of Rome. The soloist for this concert will be double bassist Patrick Bigelow. The concert will also feature the Junior String Orchestra under the direction of its conductor, Jean-Ai Patrascu.

On Saturday, April 30, the Orchestra will present a special 30^th Anniversary Gala Concert at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall. The guest artist for the evening will be OSM concertmaster Andrew Wan, who will perform Mozart’s Violin Concerto no. 3 and a new work for solo violin and orchestra especially composed for the occasion by Stewart Grant.

During Easter Weekend, March 25 to 27, the Orchestra will participate in the biannual Festival of the Association des orchestres de jeunes du Québec. As part of the Festival’s Gala Concert in the Maison symphonique de Montréal on Sunday afternoon, March 27, they will present a joint performance with the Orchestre de jeunes du Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean conducted by Spanish guest conductor Miguel Romea.

Other performances this season will include concerts at 3pm on Sunday afternoon, April 17, at Beaurepaire United Church, as part of the City of Beaconsfield’s main concert series, and on Friday evening, June 17, as part of the City of Dollard-des-Ormeaux’s summer concert series.

On Friday, June 24, the Orchestra will present its annual outdoor Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day concerts in Pointe-Claire and Dorval in celebration of La Fête nationale.

For further information, please phone 514 623-6662, e-mail to [email protected] or visit the WIYSO website at www.osjwi.qc.ca.