District 214 presents the Honors Music Festival
The finest musical talent from Northwest Suburban High School District 214 will be on stage, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 8, for the annual district Honors Music Festival.
The concert will be at Forest View Educational Center, 2121 S. Goebbert Road, Arlington Heights.
Featured on the program are the district's Honors Choir, Honors Orchestra, Honors Band, and the winner of this year's District 214 Concerto Competition, freshman violin soloist Gallia Kastner of John Hersey High School.
The Honors Orchestra, conducted by Patrick O'Connor, director of the District 214 Honors Symphony Orchestra and director of orchestras at Prospect High School, will perform Manuel De Falla's “Final Dance: Jota” from “The Three-Cornered Hat” ballet.
Scott Casagrande, director of bands at Hersey High School, will direct the Honors Orchestra Winds and Brass in Mendelssohn's Overture for Winds, Op. 24.
Lastly, O'Connor will conduct Tschaikowsky's Violin Concerto in D Major, featuring violin soloist, Kastner. The 14-year old Concerto Competition winner and festival soloist will perform on a violin made by Peter Seman, a copy of the “ex-Soldat” Guarneri del Gesu made in 1742. The violin is on loan from the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation.
With Tim Heck, retired District 214 choral director, clinician, and vocal coach, at the podium and accompanied by Forrest Cataldo, the Honors Choir will perform “At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners” by Williametta Spencer; “Domine, Ad Adjuvandum Me Festina” by Il Padre G.B. Martini/ed. John Castellini, accompanied by the Honors Orchestra strings; Stroope's “Amor de Mi Alma”; and Joseph M. Martin's “The Awakening.”
Guest conductor Mark Heidel, director of bands at the University of Iowa and conductor of the Symphony Band, will direct the Honors Band in Shostakovich's Festive Overture Opus 96. The final performance of the evening will be the “Gloriosa Symphonic Poem For Band”, movements I-III, by Yashuhide Ito.
This is a free concert and open to the public.
There will be an opportunity to order a $15 CD recording of the performance. Forms will be available at the concert or by contacting the Fine Arts Coordinator at (847) 718-5365.