November is a loaded month for musical events on the Gorham Campus. By the end of the first week of November, six of the nineteen concerts to appear at USM will be over. This Saturday, The Southern Maine Symphony Orchestra which will be playing at 8 p.m. in Corthell Hall.
Conductor, Robert Lehmann, will perform a program featuring a selection of classical movements. The orchestra will perform Prokofiev’s “Lt. Kije Suite,” and the score to the Russian film “Alexander Nevsky” by Sergi Eisenstein. Mr. Lehmann is entering his seventh year as conductor of the Southern Maine Symphony Orchestra. He has been a concertmaster since the age of 16 and was once a conductor of the Greater Boston Youth Symphonies.
Along with the important musical arrangements and the conductor, there is also a very special musician that will be performing at this concert; Rhianna Wright. Last year Rhianna Wright won the Concerto Competition for harp. This competition coincided with a piano competition that strung out Ms. Wright more than she had ever been before. On top of the competitions, she had the added joy and stress of being pregnant. While for most this would be seen as too much, Wright said, “I believe that my baby helped me through this stressful time and turned it into something beautiful.” This year will be a bit different for her. Now that she has had her baby, she has returned to her double major of harp and piano and will be the featured artist on November 6th playing the solo in Handel’s “Harp Concerto”.
The orchestra’s final work is Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 6 Pastoral,” made famous by the Walt Disney film, “Fantasia.”
Rhianna Wright has been in two of my classes this year and I have had a chance to talk to her once or twice over this course of time. There is a certain amount of swagger in who she is that tells you without words that she knows what she is doing. It is the right amount of confidence and shyness. I believe that this attribute of her character will carry over into her music. I was able to interview her during one of our classes together and get a better grasp on how music has affected her life.
“I have been playing for much longer than I can count,” she said when we talked about her harp playing before entering our English 120 class. “But I think the weirdest thing about my harp playing was when I was pregnant. Most people would think it would have hindered me but I think it helped me play better.”
Without her baby by her side, or inside her it will be a different show for Rhianna, a show that should not be missed.
Admission to the show is $6 for the public and $3 for students. Call 780-5555 for more information.