Final ORSO concert Saturday features Tennessee composer, soloist

Two talented Tennessee women are playing major roles in the final Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra concert of a season devoted to showcasing Tennessee music, composers, and performers.

The women, who both live in Nashville, are Rachel DeVore Fogarty—an emerging composer, church musician and collaborative pianist—and soprano soloist Sabrina Laney Warren, who was recently lauded by a German publication for her “bell pure soprano voice.”

You can hear them, and ORSO conductor Dan Allcott, talk about the concert music at the “Dialogue with Dan” gathering at noon Friday in the lobby of the Historic Grove Theater.

The concert will start at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Oak Ridge High School Performing Arts Center.

Fogarty, who grew up in Kingston, is the daughter of an Oak Ridge National Laboratory engineer. The composer-in-residence for Schola Pacis, she has had works performed by her alma mater Belmont College, the Concert Chorale of Nashville, Boston Metro Opera, St. Pancras Church Choir of London, the Festival Singers of Atlanta, and St. Olaf College.

ORSO and Warren will perform selections from “Spoon River Anthology,” which Fogarty wrote for Warren. While ORSO plays, Warren will also sing “Knoxville Summer of 1915” by Samuel Barber (1910-1981), which is based on a short story by Knoxville’s James Agee, one of Tennessee’s best writers.

The concert will conclude with Symphony No. 2 by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957).

Warren is a 2013 district winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in New York. A competition winner and international artist, she has been a soprano soloist in performances of “The Messiah,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “La Traviata” and “The Magic Flute.”

Tickets for the ORSO concert can be purchased at the door for $25 (adult), $10 (college students 19 years or older, with ID) and $5 (students 18 years and younger).

The Oak Ridge Civic Music Association season will close with a May 4 concert by the Oak Ridge Chorus at 7:30 p.m. at First Baptist Church. The concert will feature a solo by Seth Maples, the new Chorus conductor who will share conducting duties with Allcott. The program will include music by Simon and Garfunkel, Brahms, Schubert, Lauridsen, and the Tennessee composer, Charles Faulkner Bryan.

Schedule and ticket information is available on ORCMA’s website at www.orcma.org or by calling (865) 483-5569.