Contact: Bethany Shipp

STARKVILLE, Miss.—The Starkville-MSU Symphony Orchestra will present concerts March 23 and April 13 on Mississippi State’s campus.

“Sea Symphony” featuring the Starkville Symphony Chorus takes place March 23, 7:30 p.m. in Lee Hall’s Bettersworth Auditorium. The annual choral masterworks program will highlight the famous Brahms’ “Academic Festival” Overture and the 2024 MSU Student Solo Competition winner Markel Copprue, who will perform the Glazanov Saxophone Concerto. The concert will continue with a performance of Vaughan Williams’ “Symphony No. 1, A Sea Symphony,” a majestic, sweeping composition that carries the listener on a journey set to Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” with a 120-voice choir and professional soloists Roza Tulyaganova and Christopher Withrow.

On April 13, the orchestra will perform “Wingo Pops Presents Cinema Paradiso,” at 7:30 p.m. in Lee Hall’s Bettersworth Auditorium. Attendees are invited to travel back to movie classics of the silver screen with ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s soundtrack hits, such as Mancini’s “Moon River,” Bernstein’s “The Magnificent Seven,” Morricone’s “Cinema Paradiso,” and Rota’s “A Time for Us” from the 1968 version of “Romeo and Juliet.”

The orchestra is directed by Daniel Stevens, MSU music department head. Admission to both events is free and open to the public.

Learn more about the Department of Music, housed in MSU’s College of Education, at www.music.msstate.edu.

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