Park University's International Center for Music Orchestra Opening Concert Set For Next Month

The Park University International Center for Music Orchestra will hold its fall concert, its first of the season, on Friday, Nov. 1, starting at 7:30 p.m. in Graham Tyler Memorial Chapel on the University's flagship Parkville Campus. Admission to the concert is free, but attendees are asked to RSVP in advance.

For this concert, the ICM Orchestra will be under the direction of guest conductor Laura Jackson, D.M.A., music director and conductor of the Reno (Nev.) Philharmonic. Jackson has selected a program of works for string orchestra, with music by composers Johann Sebastian Bach, Benjamin Britten and Antonin Dvořák.

The program is scheduled to include: “Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major, BWV 1048,” by Bach; “Simple Symphony, Op.4,” by Britten; and “Serenade for Strings in E Major, Op.22,” by Dvorak.

Jackson, who has been music director and conductor of the Reno Philharmonic since 2009, was the first female assistant conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra from 2004-07. Under Jackson's leadership, the Reno Philharmonic has expanded its community and education programs and initiatives, including Composers In Residence, Conduct Us, movies with live orchestra performances and Play for a Day, where amateur musicians perform side-by-side in concert with Reno Phil musicians. In the recording arena, Jackson has recorded Michael Daugherty's “Time Cycle” with the Bournemouth (England) Symphony Orchestra Symphony, with Marin Alsop and Mei-Ann Chen for Naxos, with Marc Rovetti and the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, and Augusta Reed Thomas's violin concerto, “Spirit Musings.”

For more information about the concert and Jackson (and a link to RSVP), visit icm.park.edu/park-icm-orchestra-fall-concert-with-guest-conductor-laura-jackson.

The next performance in the International Center for Music's 2024-25 concert season will be a recital by students in the ICM's strings studios on Thursday, Nov. 14, starting at 7:30 p.m. at the 1900 Building in Mission Woods, Kan. The strings studios are led by Ben Sayevich, violin, Daniel Veis, cello, and Chung-Hoon Peter Chun, viola. For more information, visit icm.park.edu/park-icm-presents-the-string-studios-in-recital.