WOODSTOCK CHAMBER ORCHESTRA’S FINAL CONCERT OF THE 2004-05 SEASON ON APRIL 27 AT BARD Program features works by Beethoven and Elgar

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—The Bard Center presents the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra (WCO) on Wednesday, April 27. The program, conducted by David Rudge, will begin at 8:00 p.m. in Olin Hall. Admission to the concert is $12 for adults; students, children, and Bard faculty and staff are admitted without charge. (Additional performances will be on Saturday, April 23, at 8:00 p.m. at Holy Cross Church in Kingston; and on Sunday, April 24 at 3:00 p.m. at Bearsville Theater in Woodstock.) This season the WCO is auditioning conductors for music director, a position left vacant by the retirement of longtime Bard faculty member Luis Garcia-Renart. This is the last concert in the 2004-05 WCO series at Bard that features a conducting candidate. The program includes Elgar’s Serenade in E Minor, Op.20 for strings; and Beethoven’s Coriolanus Overture, Op. 62 and Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92. The WCO, formed in 1980 by musicians from the Woodstock area, has expanded over the years and now comprises 38 professional musicians from the entire Hudson Valley. The WCO regularly commissions and performs music by local and regional composers. Each season it gives approximately 14 performances in Woodstock, Kingston, and Saugerties, and at Bard College. These concerts are made possible in part with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and through the generosity of the Homeland Foundation and the Leon Levy Endowment at Bard College. For further information or to order tickets, call the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra at 845-246-7045. -continued- ABOUT THE CONDUCTOR David Rudge, director of orchestral activities, conductor of opera at the State University of New York at Fredonia, and music director of the Orchard Park Symphony Orchestra, has conducted orchestras on five continents, to rave reviews. As director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Guatemala, he was credited with the dramatic rebirth of that orchestra. Describing the group’s performance as “dynamic” and “electric,” Guatemala’s Prensa Libre wrote “it has been many years since we have heard a symphony orchestra play with such inspiration.” Rudge founded the Eastminster Chamber Orchestra, and was assistant conductor of the University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra, the Columbia Lyric Opera and Ballet, and the South Carolina Philharmonic. During that time he was noted for his “Bernstein-like intensity” (The State, Columbia, S,C.) He was chosen several times to prepare the Beethoven Chamber Orchestra for the International Workshop for Conductors in ZlÌn, Czech Republic. He has guest-conducted the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra in Mariánské Lázne, Czech Republic, and, as a two-time winner of the International Opera Conductors’ Competition, he was invited to conduct a complete production of Rigoletto at the Silesian State Opera in the Czech Republic, and to lead the Vratza Philharmonic in Bulgaria. In 1996, as an artistic ambassador for the State Department, he spent two months in Damascus, Syria, conducting the National Symphony and Chamber Orchestra. He has conducted the Opera and Orchestra at the Rome Festival, Italy, and has guest conducted the Dialecto Urbano Chorus, Caracas, Venezuela, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, with Jean-Luc Ponty as soloist, and the Western New York Chamber Orchestra. Holding degrees from the Hartt School of Music, the University of Houston, and the University of South Carolina, Rudge has also studied conducting at the Dartington School, England, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Pierre Monteux School, the Aspen Music Festival, the National Conservatory of Romania, and with such notables as Charles Bruck, Max Rudolf, Gunther Schuller, and Maurice Abravanel. He studied violin with Yumi Ninomiya, Jascha Brodsky, Renato Bonacini, and Fredell Lack. Chamber music coaching has been with members of the Curtis, Cleveland, Kolisch, Amadeus, Portland, Razumovsky and Emerson String Quartets. Rudge has taught at Oklahoma State University, the University of South Carolina, Colby College, and the Hartt School of Music; at the Conservatorio Nacional, Guatemala; the Higher Institute of Music, Damascus, Syria; the Omega Institute of Holistic Studies, New York; and was a guest conductor at the Friedman School, Caracas, Venezuela. He has been coach and guest conductor of the Boston, Columbia, Houston and Costa Rican Youth Orchestras, as well as many student honor orchestras. At SUNY Fredonia, Rudge teaches one of the country’s few nonjazz free improvisation courses. He has played as both a violinist and violist with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Orquesta Sinfónica Venezuela, the Charleston Symphony, the Portland Symphony, and the Houston Grand Opera. He was the first violinist of the Andrea String Quartet, and was invited to perform with the Portland String Quartet in their 25th anniversary concert. In 1998 Rudge was awarded a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship to return to the Middle East. As a senior fellow, he spent the summer months in Egypt conducting the Cairo Opera Orchestra, the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, and the Cairo Opera Chorus, and teaching at the National Conservatoire of Music. The Cairo press called him “a proper maestro. . . grandly expressive.” # # # (4/14/05)

This event was last updated on 04-29-2005

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