Baylor School of Music to Present Concert in Fort Worth Oct. 23

by Richard Veit

WACO, Texas - World renowned organist Joyce Jones will be the soloist Thursday, Oct. 23, when the Baylor Symphony Orchestra performs in Fort Worth's Broadway Baptist Church as the culmination of Baylor University's Diamond Jubilee Campaign to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Baylor's School of Music.
The concert in Fort Worth will be held at 8 p.m. in the sanctuary of Broadway Baptist Church, 305 West Broadway at Jennings.
Jones, Baylor University's Joyce Oliver Bowden Professor of Music and Organist-in-Residence, will be featured in a performance of Joseph Jongen's "Symphonie Concertante," a brilliantly colorful work for organ and orchestra that was written in 1926 and remains to this day Jongen's most popular composition.
Also on the Fort Worth program will be Richard Strauss's tone poem "Death and Transfiguration" and selected movements from the suite for large orchestra "The Planets" by Gustav Holst. "Death and Transfiguration," written in 1889, is Strauss' depiction of "the last hours of a man who had striven for the highest ideals." Holst's suite, dating from 1918, presents in musical terms the mythical and astrological character of each of the planets of the solar system-except for Earth and, of course, Pluto (which astronomers had not yet discovered).
According to Dr. Marvin L. Lamb, dean of the Baylor University School of Music, funds raised through the Diamond Jubilee Campaign will be used exclusively for student scholarships. "We're building on a really superb 75-year history," he said, "and we want to ensure that the next 75 years are equally great."
Tickets for the Fort Worth concert are available by calling the Baylor University Development Office in Dallas at (214) 953-0190. Reserved seats are priced at $25 and $15, and children and students will be admitted for $10.
The conductor of the Baylor Symphony Orchestra is Stephen Heyde, the Mary Franks Thompson Professor of Orchestral Studies and Conductor-in-Residence.