WARTBURG COMMUNITY SYMPHONY TO FEATURE GUEST ARTISTS AT OCT. 30 CONCERT

WARTBURG COLLEGE MARKETING & COMMUNICATION

The Wartburg Community Symphony will welcome two guest artists at its first concert of the 2021-22 season on Saturday, Oct. 30. The concert, titled “Pillars of Faith,” will begin at 7 p.m. in Neumann Auditorium.   

Rebecca Nederhiser will make her WCS conducting debut at the season opener, which will feature guest artists Jordan Redd, an award-winning French horn player, and Karen Black, a widely recognized organist. The orchestra also will perform “English Folk Song Suite” by R. Vaughan Williams and Symphony No. 5 by Felix Mendelssohn. 

Prior to the concert, Nederhiser will host a 6 p.m. talk in Neumann Auditorium. It will include conversation with the guest artists and a discussion of the Mendelssohn work, also known as the “Reformation Symphony,” which ends with the Martin Luther chorale “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” 

Redd will join the orchestra for Franz Joseph Haydn’s Horn Concerto No. 1. His recent accolades include first-prize honors in the Charleston International Romantic Music Competition, Grand Prize Virtuoso Competition and Golden Music Classical Awards. This December, he will make his Weill Recital Hall solo debut at Carnegie Hall.  

He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and teaches horn and theory at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Illinois. He will offer a master class on Friday, Oct. 29, beginning at 1:30 p.m. in Sandra Rada Recital & Orchestra Hall in the Wartburg College Bachman Fine Arts Center. The event is free and open to the public. 

Black, the Rudi Inselmann Endowed Professor of Organ at Wartburg, will be featured in Respighi’s Suite in G Major. 

An active recitalist and clinician, Black earned her Doctor of Music in organ performance and literature from Indiana University. She has performed throughout the United States, including a recent recital for the North Central Regional Conference of the American Guild of Organists. In Germany, she has appeared in recital at the Castle Church in Wittenburg and St. George’s Church in Eisenach. Her solo concert at Wartburg this past September celebrated the 25^th anniversary of the Wartburg Chapel’s Dobson Organ. 

Concert tickets are $17 for adults and free for youth ages 18 and under and Wartburg College students. Wartburg Community Symphony Association memberships, ranging upward from $50, provide complimentary tickets to all four concerts of the season. The remaining concerts for the 2021-22 season will be Dec. 11, Feb. 19 and April 9.  

Tickets and memberships will be available in the Neumann Auditorium lobby beginning at 5:15 p.m. on Oct. 30.  

For more information and to purchase tickets online, visit the WCS website at www.wartburg.edu/symphony.