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The always eagerly anticipated series of annual performances of IC’s top orchestral ensemble (the Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra - ICSO) kicks off this academic season (2021-22) with a special Alumni Weekend concert on Saturday, 10/2, at 8:15 pm in Ford Hall of the Whalen Center for Music, which will also be repeated (albeit with a slightly varied program) on Sunday, 10/10, at 4:00 pm, also in Ford Hall.  Alongside the concert’s main offering, Rimsky-Korsakov’s sumptuously orchestrated, exotic symphonic suite Scheherazade (his Op. 35 from 1888) and a short introductory piece, Celebración (1997) by Karel Husa (20th century composer of worldwide reputation and past member of the composition faculties of Ithaca College and Cornell University), this program will also feature three student soloists, winners of the 2020 IC Concerto Competition.  For this occasion, IC ’21 graduates, Alexei Aceto (piano) and Brian Breen (marimba) will return to campus and join current senior, Harris Andersen (piano) in finally getting to perform their selections with the orchestra after having to wait for over a year due to complications and disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic on the IC campus and beyond.  Their respective, exciting offerings will be: Frederic Chopin’s Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brilliante, Op. 22 (1834), one of the great Polish composer’s most musically refined and technically impressive, iconic works for piano and orchestra; the 2nd mvt. of Sergei Golovko’s Russian Marimba Concerto (2016), a contemporary work of powerfully dramatic narrative and fascinating soundscapes; and the 3rd mvt. of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 18 (1901), a perennial favorite of the concert halls around the world and, indeed, the work that is often referred to as “the most famous Piano Concerto of them all”.  Rehearsals have already been taking place at Whalen and, on their evidence, the culminating event promises to be spectacular: a fitting, celebratory return to “normalcy” at the IC School of Music with an exciting live concert featuring its flagship orchestral ensemble under Prof. Grant Cooper (its principal conductor and Musical Director) partnered by three of its most singularly talented and accomplished students/instrumentalists.