BRO Revels! 2023
BRO Revels! 2023: The Blue Ridge Orchestra’s annual December celebration makes the season bright!
The Blue Ridge Orchestra welcomed the winter holidays with two performances of BRO Revels! 2023, featuring Seth Walker and The Walker Family Band. This program also highlighted The Nutcracker Suite while introducing harpist Tori Parrish. Presented at 3:00 pm in Charles M. Beall Auditorium, Haywood Community College, on Saturday, December 9th, and in the Warren Wilson Presbyterian Church on Sunday, December 10th, the program was an eclectic mix of old and new, familiar and surprising.
Music Director Milton Crotts began the program with Rigby’s Escape, a light and cheery piece for flute, clarinet, and string orchestra composed by featured composer Andre Madatian. The BRO Strings then changed gears to accompany The Walker Family Band performing its original music – a unique blend of traditional, old-time, Celtic, and classical – with a familial twist. The genre shifted again as Tori Parrish took center stage to perform Deborah Henson-Conant’s invigorating Baroque Flamenco for harp and strings, a musical tour de force that defies the stereotype of this most fascinating of instruments.
The full orchestra took over for the second part of the program, presenting the lyrical second movement of "Gaelic Symphony" composed in 1894 by Amy Beach, the “dean of women composers”. The concerts concluded with the celebrated music of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite, a perennial favorite of musicians and audiences alike.
With performances in Clyde and Swannanoa, the Blue Ridge Orchestra furthered its mission to share fine music with audiences across Western North Carolina, and is particularly proud to continue its association with Haywood Community College. Like Revels! past, BRO Revels! 2023 ushered in the holiday season with comfort and joy.
BRO Revels! 2023 was generously sponsored by Mosaic Community Lifestyle Realty.
Milton Crotts, conductor
Rigby’s Escape for Flute, Clarinet, & String Orchestra by Andre Madatian (b.1992)
Bradford Malbon, flute ~ Justin Landry, clarinet
Humours of Mallow by Landon Walker
Prism by Jennie Walker Brunner
The Ashebrook by Scott Walker, arranged by Scott Walker
The Walker Family Band
Soñando en Español for harp and orchestra, III. Baroque Flamenco, by Deborah Henson-Conant (b. 1953)
Tori Parrish, harp
Call My Name by Seth Walker
Rewind by Seth Walker, arranged by Scott Walker Seth Walker, vocals and guitar ~ Landon Walker, bass
All of These Things by Seth Walker, arranged by Scott Walker
Intermission
Gaelic Symphony, II. Alla siciliana - Allegro vivace – Andante, by Amy Beach (1867–1944)
The Nutcracker Suite, Op.71a
II. Danses caractéristiques
a. Marche
b. Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy
c. Russian Dance (Trepak)
d. Arabian Dance
e. Chinese Dance
f. Dance of the Reed-Flutes
III. Waltz of the Flowers
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson (1908–1975)
Guest Conductor, David Jamison
Concert Photo Credit: Kathy Kmonicek