MUSIC: Teen to fly as Lark soloist with youth orchestra
By Eric E. Harrison (Contact)
Violinist Samantha Grelen will be the soloist Sunday in Ralph Vaughan
Williams’ The Lark Ascending with the Arkansas Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Grelen is the orchestra’s concertmaster.
2008-05-15 12:08:00
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LITTLE ROCK — It may look like Samantha Grelen has gone about as high as she can go with the Arkansas Symphony Youth Orchestra - she’s the concertmaster, occupying first chair in first violin and leading the orchestra’s string section.
But Grelen, 18 and a homeschooler in Maumelle, will rise a little higher at the Arkansas Symphony Youth Orchestras concert at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Hall High School Auditorium, H and McKinley streets, Little Rock.
She’ll be the soloist in The Lark Ascending, a romance for violin and orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with the Youth Symphony, made up of advanced student musicians, and conductor James Hatch.
“I love this piece,” Grelen says. “It has its technical challenges, but it’s a very personal piece; you have to put a lot of yourself into it.”
Grelen describes the piece as more of a collaborative effort between soloist and orchestra than a concerto. Hatch introduced her to it a couple of years ago, not necessarily as something in which she might solo with the orchestra.
“It’s a natural choice, though,” she says.
This is Grelen’s first year as sole concertmaster after sharing the chair for two years with others.
Grelen has been working on Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, which she’ll play for a competition later this month at the University of Central Arkansas at Conway, and some Bach solo works. She’s heading in the fall to Cedarville University in Ohio.
She has already racked up a few professional and semi-pro gigs. In April, for example, she played as a substitute with the Arkansas Symphony for its performances of Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly and also in the pit for the Arkansas Choral Society’s performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. She’s also been playing with the Conway Symphony.
The Youth Symphony may not have to look far for Grelen’s successor as concertmaster -her sister, Rebekah, 15, is also a violinist and an assistant principal with the orchestra.
The Youth Orchestra will also play a suite from The Sea Hawk by Erik Wolfgang Korngold and the fourth movement from the Symphony No. 8 by Antonin Dvorak.
The beginner-level, strings-only Preparatory Orchestra, conductor John Jarboe and assistant conductor John Dahlstrand will kick off the concert with the Spirit of ’76 by Richard Meyer, Mythos by Soon Hee Newbold and Blue Grass Country by Carol Nunez.
And the intermediate-level Academy Orchestra - Tom Mc-Donald, conductor, and Darby BeDell, assistant conductor - will perform arrangements of Capriccio Italien by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, music from the movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by Patrick Doyle and John Williams and the Carmen Suite by Georges Bizet.
Tickets are $5, $3 for students. Call (501) 666-1761, Extension 21, or visit the Web site, www.arkansassymphony.org .
This article was published Friday, May 16, 2008.
Weekend, Pages 74 on 05/16/2008
