This Saturday the Cornell Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Guillame Pirard, will be performing a concert in Bailey Hall. The concert, which will take place at 3 p.m., is free and open to the public.
In this concert, the Cornell Symphony Orchestra will perform three works by different female composers. These pieces include Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps (Of a Spring Morning), Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Something for the Dark and Margaret Bonds’ “The Montgomery Variations.”
The Cornell Symphony Orchestra is one of two orchestras in Cornell’s 100-year-old orchestra program, with the other being the Cornell Chamber Orchestra. The two ensembles include an estimated total of 100 students, and they predominantly perform pieces from the Western classical canon.
Saturday’s concert will be one of seven to eight performed by the orchestras annually, and it will be the Cornell Orchestra Program’s final concert of the fall semester.
In addition to their concerts at Cornell University, the Cornell Symphony Orchestra tours nationally and internationally, allowing participating students to experience new cultures and perform in well-known venues all around the world.
The recruitment process for the Cornell Symphony Orchestra is selective; all members are required to undergo an intense audition process early in the semester prior to the start of classes.
Guillame Pirard, the current conductor of the Cornell Symphony Orchestra, is a visiting lecturer at Cornell University, currently teaching classes in the Department of Music. Pirard, born in Belgium, has studied music at both the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music and at the Juilliard School.
Students interested in attending the Cornell Symphony Orchestra’s December concert can find more information on the Cornell Events Website.