NJIO 30th Anniversary Season

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New Jersey Intergenerational Orchestra is thrilled to announce plans for its 30th Anniversary Season. We will also be celebrating our 10th season under the baton of Artistic Director, Maestro Warren Cohen!

 

Here is a preview of what is coming this season. Be sure to check the njio website for any updates as concert dates approach.

 

Sunday, November 12, 2023, 3 pm - Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church, Plainfield, NJ

NJIO Young Artist Concerto Competition winner, Elie Kuan, will perform Haydn's Cello Concerto in C major. Composer George Enescu's Romanian Rhapsody no. 1, a work that draws from Romanian folk dance, was completed when he was only 19 years old. The Symphony will also perform Czech composer Smetana's lyrical symphonic poem Moldau, and Danzón No. 2 by Arturo Márquez, a thrilling piece that had concluded our Spring, 2016 concert to thunderous applause. You may know this music from popular videos of it being performed by the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, conducted by a young Gustavo Dudamel.

 

Sunday, December 10, 2023, 2 pm - Lawton Johnson Middle School, Summit, NJ

This Holiday concert is designed to attract families by incorporating seasonal favorites into a shorter concert. The concert introduces children to the joy of performance by giving them instruments to play along with the orchestra during Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride." An Instrument Petting Zoo will follow the concert.

 

Sunday, February 25, 2024, 3 pm - Dolan Performance Hall, Saint Elizabeth University, Morristown, NJ

In addition to playing in this beautiful performance space, this concert will be live-streamed and recorded. On the program are Beethoven’s Leonore Overture no. 1 and Mendelssohn’s Mendelssohn’s Symphony no. 5, composed when he was only 21 years old. Also known as the Reformation Symphony, it contains musical references to both the Dresden “Amen” and Martin Luther’s chorale “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” (A Mighty Fortress is our God).

 

Sunday, April 21, 2024, 3 pm - Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church, Plainfield, NJ

NJIO’s 30th Anniversary Concert features a spectacular young opera star, soprano Sydney Dardis. Ms. Dardis will perform with NJIO what is known as “Four Last Songs” by Richard Strauss, completed in 1948 when the composer was 84. According to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, they are “songs of farewell – to life, to art, to a vanished world. There is nothing like them in music for the sheer intensity of their concentrated, gentle heartache. It is music so bewitchingly sensuous, so achingly nostalgic, so subtle in its interweaving of vocal and instrumental textures as to defy description.” Ms. Dardis will also perform Lehar’s “Einer Wird Kommen” (Someone Will Come) from the operetta Der Zarewitsch (The Tsarevich). Ms. Dardis received her Master of Music degree in Vocal Arts from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Darrell Babidge. In 2023 Ms. Dardis was named a winner of the New York Regional District in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

NJIO Symphony will also play the popular Overture to Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II.

A celebration of NJIO’s 30th season will immediately follow the 30th Anniversary Concert. Guests will be entertained by NJIO musicians, a silent auction and a tricky tray, and a variety of festive hors d’oeuvres.

 

Three of our concerts this season will feature performances by each of our ensembles: NJIO Symphony, conducted by Warren Cohen, our middle-level group called Intermezzo Orchestra, conducted by Oliver Hagen, who is new to NJIO this season, and our Prelude Ensemble, conducted by Elizabeth Maliszewski, for beginning-level string players. All ensemble members will play together at the Holiday concert.

 

The Outreach Ensemble, under the direction of Miki Hatcher, will be busy all year long performing at community events, senior centers, and senior housing facilities. If you are attending the November 30 New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s afternoon performance at NJPAC featuring Joshua Bell, plan on coming early to hear Outreach Ensemble under the direction of Michelle Hatcher perform some familiar pieces in the lobby.