NATCHITOCHES – The Natchitoches-Northwestern Symphony will present a concert “Gershwin and Friends” on Tuesday, March 14 at 7:30 p.m. in Magale Recital Hall. Tickets are $15.75 each and can be purchased online at https://nnssla.org/ticket-sales. NSU, Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts and BPCC@NSU students are admitted free with a current student I.D. A livestream will be available at capa.nsula.edu/livestream.
Dr. Doug Bakenhus is musical director and conductor of the Natchitoches-Northwestern Symphony Orchestra. Sofiko Tchetchelashvili is the instructor.
The concert will feature Northwestern State faculty member and pianist John Price on George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and vocalists Kelli Roberts and Jenny Massia on songs by George and Ira Gershwin and Stephen Sondheim. They will be featured on “Summertime” from “Porgy and Bess,” “Send in the Clowns from “A Little Night Music,” “Someone to Watch Over Me” from “Oh, Kay!” and “I Got Rhythm” from “Girl Crazy.”
“It has been a while since I put a program together of all American composers and this time, I wanted a concert that had a variety of deeply rooted music born of this soil,” said Bakenhus. “I started with Gershwin, and wanted to feature our new faculty pianist, Dr. John Price. Thus, ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ came to mind.”
Massia and Roberts have been singing together for over a decade, but in the last three years have created their own band with unique song selections and a focus on bringing people together to have a great experience through music. Close harmonies, friendship and a love of all musical styles are a consistency within “Jenny and Kelli” that has earned a loyal following and many statewide bookings.
“Ever since I heard Kelli Roberts and Jenny Massia sing at a restaurant downtown, I thought, I must someday ask them to sing with the symphony,” said Bakenhus. “So, finally, when I selected this theme, I thought their voices would be perfect for Gershwin songs and we are also throwing in Sondheim’s ‘Send in the Clowns’ just for fun. And I am so grateful that they agreed to perform with us.”
Price is an assistant professor of piano and piano pedagogy at Northwestern State. He received his doctorate in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Oklahoma and has previously been a faculty member at Utah State University and Oklahoma City University.
Price has worked as a staff accompanist at the Heifetz International Music Institute and the University of Oklahoma Summer String Academy. As a collaborative pianist, he has performed in masterclasses for artists such as Paul Katz, Joseph Alessi, Andrés Cárdenes and Marilyn Horne. Price has won prizes at the Utah State University Piano Festival, the Donna Turner Smith Piano Competition and been an Artist-in-Residence at the Baltimore Piano Festival. He is a two-time winner of the Utah State University Concerto Competition and as a result performed concerti of Liszt and Tchaikovsky with the USU Symphony Orchestra. During his studies, he performed as a soloist for artists such as Stephen Hough, Robert McDonald, Norman Krieger and Jerome Lowenthal.
The program will also include the Overture to “Candide” by Leonard Bernstein
Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American Symphony” by William Grant Still and the hoedown from “Rodeo” by Aaron Copland.
Bakenhus said Gershwin incorporates blues and jazz elements in his piece, but the first person to do this was actually William Grant Still.
“The ‘Afro-American Symphony’ uses these jazz elements in a different way than Gershwin, and with an incredible wide range of emotions from the most profound sorrow to the most uplifting joy and celebration,” said Bakenhus. “He uses Paul Laurence Dunbar poems as epitaphs for each of the movements: longing, sorrow, humor and aspiration, all the while using the musical elements that have roots in the African American Spirituals juxtaposed with traditional symphonic classical elements. It is truly a remarkable and unique piece of music that was frequently program
