The UNLV Symphony Orchestra, conducted by professor Taras Krysa, opens its 2015-16 season at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 21, in Artemus Ham Concert Hall. The program includes Gioachino Rossini's Overture to Guillaume Tell; Ellen Taafe Zwilich's Concerto Elegia for Solo Flute and Strings (Jennifer Grim, flute); and Ludwig Van Beethoven's Symphony No. 2.
Grim performs the premiere of Concerto Elegia, by Ellen Taafe Zwilich. UNLV is one of just 11 universities who commissioned this work. The other participating schools are University of Miami, Baylor University, Vanderbilt University, Boston Conservatory, Louisiana State University, Rice University, Skidmore College., University of Louisville, University of Michigan, and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Zwilich is the recipient of numerous prizes and honors, including the 1983 Pulitzer Prize in Music (the first woman ever to receive this coveted award), the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Chamber Music Prize, the Arturo Toscanini Music Critics Award, the Ernst von Dohnanyi Citation, and Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, four Grammy nominations, and, among other distinctions, she has been elected to the Florida Artists Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 1995, she was named to the first Composer's Chair in the history of Carnegie Hall, and she was designated Musical America's Composer of the Year in 1999.
Tickets to the concert are $10 and discounts are available. To purchase tickets, visit pac.unlv.edu or call 702-895-ARTS (2787).
