The Topanga Symphony, the Santa Monica Mountains’ only community orchestra, announced the Winter 2024 free concert date of February 25, 2024, at 3:00 P.M. at the Topanga Community Center. Music Director Jerome Kessler will conduct Symphony #85 (“La Reine”) by Franz Joseph Haydn, Momentum Suite for Strings by Ron Jones, and Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104 by Antonin Dvorak, with Shengyu Meng, Cello.
Cellist Shengyu Meng is pursuing her Bachelor of Music degree at the Colburn Conservatory of Music with Clive Greensmith. She is an active performing and teaching artist believing in providing musical education for students of diverse backgrounds. As a solo performer, Shengyu has won prizes in many competitions, including The Burbank Philharmonic Young Artist Competition, The Stulberg International String Competition, and The Ronald Sachs International Music Competition. Shengyu has performed with “From the Top” on NPR radio and received the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award. Haydn’s Symphony #85 is the fourth of six Haydn’s Paris Symphonies. Completed in 1786, it is known as “La Reine” (the Queen) as it was the favorite of then French Queen Marie Antoinette. Ron Jones composed music for many television theme songs and episodes. Momentum Suite for Strings was inspired as Jones explains, “I was impressed with the English string orchestra music coming out of mostly England during the 19th-Century. Works by Holst, Delius, Elgar created a body of wonderful pieces that still resound. My thought was to create a suite ‘in-the-style’ of these masters yet throw in a few aspects from modern music and see what comes of that mix. ”
The Topanga Symphony has been presenting free classical music concerts to the public for 41 years because of the support of LA County Department of Arts and Culture OGP and Creative Recovery grant programs, donations from “Friends of the Topanga Symphony” and local businesses and a grant from LA County 3rd District Supervisor Lindsay Horvath’s Discretionary Funding Program. For more information visit, www.topangasymphony.com
