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On Sept. 16, concert pianist, composer and recording artist Karen Walwyn joined the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and conductor Geoffrey Robson in Little Rock's Robinson Center Performance Hall to play the world premiere of composer Florence Price's own orchestration of her 1934 "Piano Concerto in One Movement."
The scene opens with suspense-filled music, as a tall man in a leather jacket and a well-used fedora forges his way through the jungle. Birds and primates call, and a native guide screams. And you still haven't seen the face of Indiana Jones for the first time. But in the years since its release in 1981, everything about "Raiders of the Lost Ark" has become familiar, beloved. The whip; the slow, almost always sardonic grin; the reunion with his great love Marion; the destruction of the Ark of the Covenant at the hands of the Nazis -- and God.
The Fort Smith Symphony is having its annual EarQuake! concert for area fifth graders.
"It's mind-blowing for me to remember that because of one single request from my band director, my life has had such an incredible journey," says Tommy Dobbs, assistant professor of percussion at Oklahoma City University and principal percussionist with the Fort Smith Symphony. "If you would have told 14-year-old me that one day I would be a marimba soloist with a professional orchestra, I would have literally said, 'What's a marimba and what's an orchestra?' I'm actually laughing and tearing up a bit."
John Jeter, conductor for the Fort Smith Symphony, served as a guest conductor for a celebratory musical event in Greece over the holidays.