The audience for the Sunday, Oct. 21, concert on the Italian Baroque Organ at the Memorial Art Gallery will enjoy a performance combining music and motion.
Titled “Organ and the Body,” the first of this year’s monthly series of Third Sunday Concerts with the Italian Baroque Organ features organist Stephen Kennedy and dancers led by choreographer Vanessa van Wormer. Admission to the concert, which starts at 5:30 p.m., is $10 ($5 for students with ID), and tickets are available at the door or in advance at the Gallery.
Kennedy is instructor of sacred music at the Eastman School and director of music at Christ Church. He has appeared often as an organ soloist in programs of standard repertoire as well as recitals consisting solely of improvisations. He is also a composer of choral, instrumental, and chamber music, has given workshops on choral music, chant, and improvisation in the United States and abroad, and has collaborated on numerous occasions with dancers and choreographers.
Van Wormer has danced with Ballet Spokane, Spokane Opera, and the Bill Evans Dance Company. Her work has been presented by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, American College Dance Festival Association, Inland Northwest Dance Fest, Rochester Contemporary Dance Collective, and Configurations Dance Theater. She is currently a part time visiting instructor at SUNY The College at Brockport and Nazareth College.
Subsequent programs in the Third Sunday Concerts with the Italian Baroque Organ include “Strings and Pipes Together: Harpsichord and Organ in Tuneful Harmony,” with William Porter and Edoardo Bellotti on Sunday, Nov. 18; and the annual Holiday Concert on Sunday, Dec. 16.
The Italian Baroque Organ was built around 1770 in central Italy. Restored and installed in 2005 at the Memorial Art Gallery, the instrument is the only one of its kind in North America. Its beautiful authentic sounds have been heard by thousands of people who have come to the weekly Sunday mini-recitals or the special monthly concerts by internationally known guest artists and Eastman musicians.
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