USU Symphony Orchestra Presents 2024 Concerto Evening

The USU Symphony Orchestra will host its annual Concerto Evening featuring the winners of the student concerto competition. It will take be at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 28, at the Daines Concert Hall.

Student soloists will perform favorite works of the solo repertoire with renowned Romantic works by Grieg, Rachmaninoff and Grounod, and Modern music by Shostakovich, Korngold and Skoryk.

The performers include Caden Webb (voice); Joshua Swank (cello); Carissa Devenport (violin); and Adam Bowen, Christopher Chapman and Hayden Rouse (piano).

“Not only are the winners of the competition role models to their peers at the university,” said Director of Orchestral Studies Sergio Bernal, “they also inspire children and youth in the community to excel in their creative and academic endeavors.”

The selection process for this annual university-wide competition is very rigorous.

Instructors from across the music department nominate students from their studios to move on to an eliminatory round, followed by final auditions.

“This unique event celebrates the talent and accomplishments of students from the music department and the university, and it recognizes the excellent training provided by our outstanding studio instructors,” Bernal said.

After the final auditions, only a select few earn the opportunity to solo with the USU Symphony Orchestra.

“This upcoming performance with the orchestra gives me so much breadth to expand myself as a violinist and as a passionate musician,” said Carissa Devenport, one of the student soloists playing violin. “It’s a growing experience I’m very much looking forward to.”

Christopher Chapman will be performing a movement entitled Prayer from Skoryk’s 3rd Concerto for Piano and Strings. This song has taken an additional meaning for many people of Ukraine as a collective prayer for healing, unity and reconciliation.

“I thought that learning the work might help me appreciate their struggle a little bit more and add my own voice to this collective prayer,” Chapman said.

He is so moved in this work and its meaning, he said, he is organizing a night of remembrance and hope with Ukranian music, poetry and art on Feb. 24, which marks the two-year anniversary of the major invasion by Russia, at 7 p.m. at St. John's Episcopal Church in Logan.

Find additional information on the online info page, and purchase tickets online or at the Box Office in the Chase Fine Arts building.