Clinton Symphony Orchestra has chosen its annual Young Artist to be featured as soloist on a Saturday, February 25, 2017, concert at 7:30 p.m. in the Morrison High School Auditorium.
Soprano Allison Houldson, a senior at Morrison High School, was selected from auditions, and will perform an aria from Mozart’s opera Marriage of Figaro, and “So In Love” from Cole Porter’s Broadway musical Kiss Me Kate.
Houldson studies voice with Kathy Janicek of Morrison, and has sung in choirs since 5th grade. She has been selected for the Illinois All-State Honor Choir both her junior and senior years.
The annual Young Artist project offers a chance for high school musicians an audition experience similar to college entrance and organizational entry requirements. Each student received comments and helpful suggestions from a panel of musicians from the orchestra, and one student is invited to perform their prepared solo in concert, accompanied by the orchestra.
In addition to Allison Houldson, the panel gave honorable mention to another soprano, Hannah Seavey, a junior at Chadwick-Milledgeville High School. Both students will receive scholarship awards from the Symphony.
Conductor Brian Dollinger will open Saturday’s concert with the overture to A Life for the Tsar, an opera by Russian composer Mikhail Glinka. Following the Young Artist performance, the orchestra will play Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1 in G minor, subtitled “Winter Dreams.”
Later in life, the composer said of this symphony “although it is in many ways very immature, yet fundamentally it has more substance and is better than any of my other more mature works.”
Tickets for the concert are $15 for adults, and all students are admitted free of charge. Tickets will be available at the door, or in advance at Fitzgerald Pharmacy in Morrison, IL, Tegeler Music in Clinton, IA, Grummert’s Hardware in Sterling, and online at www.clintonsymphony.org.
Program notes for the music to be performed and other concert information is also available on the website.
The Clinton Symphony Orchestra is in its 63rd concert season.