Joyce Jones Joins the Baylor Symphony on November 9

by Richard Veit

Organist Joyce Jones will bring her spectacular keyboard talents to the next concert by the Baylor University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 9, in Jones Concert Hall in the McCrary Music Building.
Jones, the Joyce Oliver Bowden Professor of Music and Organist-in-Residence, will be the soloist in a performance of McNeil Robinson's Organ Concerto, which she premiered with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra 15 years ago. This one-movement concerto has instrumental colors that are reminiscent of French orchestrator Maurice Ravel.
Opening the program will be Richard Strauss's dazzling Festliches Präludium (or "Festival Prelude") for organ and orchestra, which was written for the opening of Vienna's new Konzerthaus in 1913.
Following intermission, the Baylor Symphony Orchestra will present Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations, which includes a subordinate role for organ. The set of 14 variations has remained one of Elgar's most popular works since its world premiere in London during June 1899. Each of the variations represents a person in Elgar's life with the final variation the composer's own self-portrait.
The conductor of the Baylor Symphony Orchestra is Stephen Heyde, the Mary Franks Thompson Professor of Orchestral Studies and Conductor-in-Residence.
The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at 710-3991.