Plano Symphony Orchestra Hosts Women Composer Series Concerts

The Plano Symphony Orchestra will present the inaugural concerts of the Women Composer Series which will feature the world premiere of “New Oceans” by Dallas-based composer Olga Amelkina-Vera. PSO Principal Violist April Kondrat will also perform Stacy Garrop’s “Lo Yisa Goy.” Led by Assistant Conductor Shira Samuels-Shragg, these concerts will celebrate the brilliant compositional voices of women from the past and present. Each composer represented on this program brings her own unique background, style, and musical language to the idiom.

Sponsored by Methodist Hospital for Surgery, the Women Composer Series concerts will be performed at the Addison Conference and Theatre Centre (15650 Addison Rd, Addison, TX) at 7 PM on Saturday, May 18 and Saturday, June 8, 2024. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased through the Plano Symphony Orchestra Box Office (972-473-7262/planosymphony.org).

Belarusian American composer Olga Amelkina-Vera is recognized as being “at the very forefront of composers writing for the guitar today” (Soundboard Magazine). Olga is a prizewinner of numerous composition competitions, including the Grand Prize in the instrumental chamber music student division of the 2017-2018 American Prize competition. She is in demand as a composer, performer, conductor, and educator. Olga’s works have been performed all over the world and recorded by the Grammy Award-winning classical guitarist David Russell (Spain), winners of the Guitar Foundation of America International Concert Artist Competition Thibaut Garcia (France), Martha Masters, Xavier Jara, and Adam Holzman (US); Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera Council Auditions mezzo-soprano Mack Wolz and soprano Michelle Areyzaga (US); as well as renowned concert guitarists, chamber ensembles, and numerous other professional and student ensembles and soloists.

American conductor Shira Samuels-Shragg is the newly appointed assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, beginning in the 2024/25 season. Shira was recently selected for The Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute,

and as a 2024 mentee of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship. Shira is currently the assistant conductor for the Spokane Symphony Orchestra, while completing her second season as assistant conductor with the Plano Symphony Orchestra.

Recently, Shira guest conducted interdisciplinary concerts with the Spokane, Corpus Christi, Irving, and South Bend symphony orchestras. She is passionate about sharing the wonders of music with young audiences and has led education concerts with the Spokane and Plano symphonies for over 50,000 students, served as cover conductor for Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, and co-founded Plano Symphony’s Summer Youth Orchestra Camp.

Shira co-founded the Youth Orchestra Camp with PSO’s Education Director, Dr. Jennifer Wheeler, with whom Shira has launched multiple other new community initiatives. These projects include the P.I.T. Program, designed to recruit, and mentor high school musicians to perform in musical theater productions with North Texas Performing Arts (NTPA), and the Women Composers Concert Series which begins in spring of 2024.
 

Last summer, Shira joined Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the USA 2022 as their Assistant Conductor for their New York residency and tour across Europe with Daniel Harding. Shira was one of NYO’s inaugural conducting apprentices as a high schooler in 2015 and was delighted to return seven years later as their assistant.

In May 2022, Shira graduated with her Master of Music in orchestral conducting from The Juilliard School, where she studied with David Robertson. While there, she served as assistant conductor to guest artists such as Barbara Hannigan and Sir Antonio Pappano. As co-conductor of the Juilliard Lab Orchestra, Shira made her Alice Tully Hall debut. Additionally, she curated two conducting recitals that placed new works in conversation
with classical symphonies.

Shira holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music with a minor in German Studies from Swarthmore College, where she studied conducting with Andrew Hauze, and piano with Marcantonio Barone. While at Swarthmore, she served as Music Director for the world premiere of Cassandra, an opera by composer Thomas Whitman and poet/librettist Nathalie Anderson. This experience deepened Shira’s desire to continue using music to uplift women’s voices and stories and solidified her love of opera.

The Women Composer Series concert is sponsored in part by Nancy Freeman, Janelle Twyford, Denise Pollis, Janie and David Orr, Ellie Barash, Heather Carlile, Mary Jo Cater, Erin Stewart, and Mirna Lynch.

For more information about the PSO’s 2024/2025 Season, visit planosymphony.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.