VGCC Students Hear Instructor perform with N.C. Symphony
Students from Vance-Granville Community College’s Music Appreciation classes traveled with their music instructor, Michael Stephenson , and Dean of Arts and Sciences Dr. Michael Ellis to hear the North Carolina Symphony in concert at Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh on Sept. 12 and Sept. 13.
The students heard not only the Symphony, but also their instructor performing with the orchestra. Stephenson played the Alto Saxophone part in Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. “It’s not every day that the students have the opportunity to see their professor play with the Symphony, especially on the saxophone,” Stephenson said. The students also heard a world premiere from North Carolina composer Robert Ward, who composed City of Oaks for the opening of the new Raleigh Convention Center. Music by Samuel Barber (Knoxville: Summer of 1915), and Antonin Dvorak (Symphony No. 9 in E Minor “From the New World”) was also featured. The program, called “From the New World to the West Side,” was part of the North Carolina Symphony’s Duke Medicine Classical Raleigh Series.
Stephenson’s course, Music Appreciation ( MUS 110 /”> MUS 110 ), is a basic survey of the music of the Western world. The September concert was not Stephenson’s first time playing with the symphony, but it was his first chance to do so in about five years. Stephenson said he was happy to be able to expose students to the Symphony, as many had never heard the group perform. Founded in 1932, the North Carolina Symphony delivers 175 performances annually throughout the state, in concert halls, auditoriums, gymnasiums and outdoor settings. Based in Meymandi Concert Hall at the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh and an outdoor summer venue at Regency Park in Cary, the orchestra has also appeared twice at Carnegie Hall in New York and once each at the Kennedy Center in Washington and Orchestra Hall in Chicago.
Above, pictured at left: A group from Vance-Granville Community College poses in the lobby of Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh on Sept. 12. On front row, from left: instructor Michael Stephenson, Rebekah Ray of Wake Forest, Corina Wyche, Renee Reason of Wake Forest, Britany Holden of Oxford, Mathew Moore of Louisburg and Adam Light of Oxford; kneeling in front, student Marquita Foster of Oxford; back row, from left: students Michael Carden of Franklinton, Jason Murphy of Youngsville, Dean of Arts and Sciences Dr. Michael Ellis, Joel Bibbee of Kittrell and Rachel Robertson of Warrenton.
Above, pictured at right: A group from Vance-Granville Community College poses in the lobby of Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh on Sept. 13. On front row, from left: Anita Velazquez of Oxford, Shaquana Alston and Kyle Freshour of Kittrell; back row, from left: instructor Michael Stephenson with Tonya Alston of Warrenton, Eric Hilliard of Macon, Chris Chappel and Patrick Miller of Oxford.
