Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country | Founded 05-05-05

July 3, 2008 issue

Eastern Festival Orchestra Performs at Farthing Auditorium Sunday

Concert Will Feature World-Renowned Violinist Midori

Story by David Brewer

On Sunday, July 26, at 8:00 p.m., the Eastern Festival Orchestra will offer its first of two performances at Farthing Auditorium as part of An Appalachian Summer. The concert will feature guest conductor David Lockington and world-renowned guest violinist Midori. The program will feature Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major and the symphony will also perform Philip Sawyers’ The Gale of Life and Sibelius’ Symphony No.5 in E-flat Major.

Over the past 25 years, Lockington has developed an impressive conducting career in the United States. A native of Great Britain who began his music career as a cellist, he has served as the music director of the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra since January 1999 and was appointed to the position of music director of the Modesto Symphony in May 2007. He is the former music director of the New Mexico Symphony and the Long Island Philharmonic.

Lockington’s guest conducting engagements have included appearances with the Saint Louis, Houston, Detroit, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Colorado and Oregon symphonies; the Buffalo, Rochester and Louisiana Philharmonics; and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall. Internationally, he has conducted orchestras in Asia, Spain and Great Britain.

Midori was born in Osaka, Japan in 1971. From a very early age, she was attracted to the sound of the violin played by her mother. When she was four, her grandparents gave her a tiny violin of her own. Three years later, Midori gave her first public performance for an audience in Osaka, playing a Paganini caprice.
At age 10, she played the Sauret cadenza of the Paganini concerto for Pinchas Zucherman, inspiring him to announce, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know about you, but I have just witnessed a miracle.” The child prodigy has since become one of the world’s leading violinists, receiving countless awards and honors, and performing more than 90 concerts worldwide each season.

In 1986 was her now-legendary performance at Tanglewood, where Midori broke the e-string on her violin twice (she had to borrow violins from the concertmaster and associate concertmaster), and had conductor Leonard Bernstein kneeling before her in awe. The next day, the New York Times’ front page carried the headline “Girl, 14, Conquers Tanglewood with 3 Violins.”

The Boston Herald said of the vionlinst, “...Midori’s unfailingly sweet yet sturdy renditions of the solo lines hover as if in midair, making for a captivating light-and-dark contrast in both works.”

For more info on the Eastern Festival Orchestra performance, click to www.appsummer.org.

Want To Go?
Date: Sunday, July 6
Time: 8:00 p.m.
Location: Farthing Auditorium
Cost: $25 for adults (section a)/$18 for adults (section b)/$15 for students (section a)/$10 for students (section b)/$5 for kids 12 and under