ITHACA, NY—Folk singing, drums, tap dancing — not quite the kind of thing you might expect at an orchestra concert. But the Ithaca College Chamber Orchestra will be breaking new ground in its recital on Sunday, April 17. The 4 p.m. performance in Ford Hall is free and open to the public.
The program kicks off with Folk Songs, a song cycle by the Italian composer Luciano Berio, performed by Ivy Walz from the School of Music’s vocal faculty.
Chamber Orchestra conductor Jeffery Meyer says that Berio’s work adapts folk songs from all over the world into a colorful and contemporary orchestral context, and the remainder of the concert will be inspired by the idea of crossing a wide variety of musical boundaries.
Joining the orchestra to assist in this mission will be
- Cellist Dave Eggar, a genre-bending performer, composer and producer who was a founding member of the FLUX String Quartet and has worked with artists ranging from Tony Bennett and Beyoncé to The Who and Coldplay (that’s his cello leading off on “Viva La Vida”);
- Singer-songwriter Amber Rubarth, winner of the NPR Mountain Stage New Song Contest, known for her warm personal style on stage and who, according to Acoustic Guitar, has a “unique gift of knocking down walls with songs so strong they sound like classics from another era”;
- Tap dancer Andrew Nemr, a founding member of Savion Glover’s dance company TiDii, doing a tribute to his mentor Gregory Hines; and
- Drummer Greg Evans, conductor of the Ithaca College Jazz Repertory Ensemble, who has performed with the Count Basie Orchestra, Chick Corea and Branford Marsalis, among other artists.
This concert will be webcast live and available on-demand the following Thursday at www.ithaca.edu/music/live.