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The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud will perform at 8 p.m.Wednesday, Oct. 7, in the Williams Center for the Arts. The concert is the second performance in this year’s Chamber Music series.
Tickets are free for Lafayette students, $6 for students at LVAIC schools, $4 for faculty and staff, and $29 for the public. They can be obtained by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009. At 6:30 p.m., Orpheus will present a rehearsal which is free and open to the public.
Other performances in the 2009-10 Chamber Music series will be the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Nov. 13, $20; the Brentano String Quartet, March 31, $18; and two more appearances by Orpheus, with special guest pianist Angela Hewitt Feb. 5, $29, and with violinist Ryu Goto May 3, $29.
The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1972 by cellist Julian Fifer and a group of fellow musicians who aspired to perform chamber orchestral repertory through their own close collaborative efforts, and without a conductor. Orpheus developed its approach to the study and performance of this repertory by incorporating the chamber music principles of personal involvement and mutual respect. Orpheus is a self-governing organization, making the repertory and interpretive decisions ordinarily assumed by a conductor.
Orpheus has received numerous distinctions and awards, including a 2001 Grammy Award for Shadow Dances: Stravinsky Miniatures, a 1999 Grammy Award for its jazz-inspired Ravel and Gershwin collaboration with Herbie Hancock, a 1998 Grammy nomination for its recording of Mozart piano concerti with Richard Goode, and the 1998 “Ensemble of the Year” award by Musical America.
Kraggerud has been praised for his ability to combine “unselfconscious stage presence and easy virtuosity” (The Guardian, July 2009), resulting in performances of rare beauty, technical brilliance, and emotional immediacy. He performs regularly with many leading orchestras including the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and BBC Symphony Orchestra. Kraggerud has appeared as a soloist and conductor throughout Scandinavia and with London’s Britten Sinfonia and makes his New York orchestral debut with the Orpheus at Carnegie Hall this season.
The 2009-2010 Performance Series at Lafayette College is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, the J. Mahlon and Grace Buck Fund, the Croasdale Fund, the Class of ’73 Fund, the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and New England Foundation for the Arts. Special thanks to the F.M. Kirby Foundation for its extraordinary support.