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Alma Symphony Orchestra

Alma Symphony Orchestra
Murray Gross, Music Director

The Alma Symphony Orchestra provides instrumentalists with an exciting and rewarding orchestral experience.  Students join together with community members and professionals to perform a wide variety of traditional and modern repertoire. Each season offers artistic challenges, and the ensemble achieves high quality performances while maintaining a relaxed and enjoyable rehearsal atmosphere. Along with four subscription concerts each year, the ASO plays special events such as an annual Children’s Concert, and collaborates with outstanding soloists, choirs and ballet companies.

The Alma Symphony Orchestra performs in the beautiful Oscar E. Remick Heritage Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of Alma College. Directed by Dr. Murray Gross, former Assistant Conductor of the Detroit Symphony, the ASO is an ideal opportunity for students at all levels to experience the thrill of playing in a fine orchestra. Students may also win the opportunity to solo with the ASO by participating in the Student Concerto Competition.

 

 

Recent seasons have included a wide range of works by Mozart, Bartok, Sibelius, Grieg, Hanson, Elgar, and many others, including:

(click on highlighted pieces to hear excerpts from live performances)

Copland-Billy the Kid

Beethoven-Symphony No. 5 

DeFalla-Scenes and Dances from "The Three-Cornered Hat"

Handel-Music for the Royal Fireworks

Márquez-Danzón No. 2

Debussy-Afternoon of a Faun

Schubert-Symphony No. 8

Tchaikovsky-Polonaise from “Eugene Onegin” 

Ravel-Mother Goose Suite

Brahms-A German Requiem

Beethoven-Violin Concerto (performed by Dr. Takeshi Abo, Alma College faculty)

Prokofiev-Lt. Kije Suite

Sibelius-Finlandia

Rossini-Italian in Algiers Overture

Dvorak-Serenade 

Bartok-Rumanian Folk Dances

Piazzola-Tangazo, Milonga del Angel

Dukas-Fanfare from “La Per

Hovhaness- And God Created Great Whales 

Maxwell Davies-An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise

Beethoven-Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor”

Torke-Sax Concerto

Mozart-Sinfonia Concertante, K.364 

Borodin-Polovtsian Dances

Offenbach- Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld 

Liszt-Totentanz, for piano and orchestra

Haydn-Symphony No. 82 “The Bear” 

Rosauro-Marimba Concerto

Orff-Carmina Burana

Faure-Pelleas and Melisande

Stravinsky-Suite No. 2

Rachmaninoff-Piano Concerto No. 2

Mendelssohn-Overture to The Hebrides

Mozart-Clarinet Concerto 

Arriaga-Symphony in D


 

 

 

Alma College provides a network of opportunities for students to become responsible leaders, including the Robert D. Swanson Responsible Leadership Speaker Series and the Leadership Fellows’ Program. The 2006 class of Leadership Fellows participated in an International Leadership Institute at Wroxton College in England in August 2007.

 

Graduate Profile

Erik Janners

Erik Janners
Graduation: 1994
Major: Music Performance

The most important thing Erik Janners learned during his time at Alma College was to care for each individual performer under his direction.

“No matter how large the band, orchestra or choir, each person in the group is still an individual with his or her own problems, successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses,” the 1994 graduate says. “The Alma music faculty got to know me, and all of us in the program, as individual people, and gave each of us what we needed personally to grow.”