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After one year off due to the global pandemic, West Texas A&M University’s Russian Music Festival will return for a livestreamed concert April 25.
The concert will be livestreamed on the festival’s Facebook page at 7:30 p.m. April 25 from WT’s Mary Moody Northen Recital Hall.
Featured guest soloist is Guglielmo Manfredi, WT professor of French horn, who will perform Rheinhold Gliere’s Horn Concerto.
“The Gliere horn concerto is hauntingly beautiful, full of lyricism and vibrant technical passages,” Manfredi said. “His music takes the audience through an emotionally charged journey and allows the horn to do what it does best — reach the heart and the soul.”
The concert also will feature the WT Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Dr. Mark Bartley, the Lilith Brainard Professor of Music, director of orchestral activities and associate director of WT’s School of Music.
“We started the festival in 2017 as a way to share the wonderful experience of Russian music by Russian composers,” said founder Mila Abbasova, a piano and theory instructor in WT’s School of Music. “We plan to expand from featuring faculty and guest artists to include a national and international student competition.”
The WT orchestra, in its first full, live performance since the pandemic, will conclude the concert with Igor Stravinsky’s “The Firebird.”
An emphasis on the arts is a key component of the University’s long-term plan, WT 125: From the Panhandle to the World.
-West Texas A&M University