Bates College Orchestra to offer world premiere of symphony

LEWISTON — A conductor and prolific composer who has performed and taught across the U.S., Scott Ordway will lead the Bates College Orchestra in the world premiere of his Symphony No. 3 at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The program will also include Beethoven’s Overture to “Coriolanus” and Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll.” Admission is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required, available at batesorchestra.eventbrite.com. For more information, contact olinarts@bates.com or 207-786-6163.

Ordway, visiting assistant professor of music at Bates, started the symphony in Colorado in 2012 while he was a fellow at the Aspen Summer Music Festival, and continued it in Philadelphia and New York City.

Ordway said the piece consists of a single, 25-minute movement and is scored for strings, brass, tympani, harp and woodwinds. The orchestra will number about 35 and will incorporate Bates students, community members and two professional musicians.

Among the brass players are Kirk Read, a professor of French and francophone studies, who plays tuba, and politics professor James Richter, a trombonist.

The symphony is technically challenging for the players, and is also challenging for younger musicians with less experience of tracking the overall development of a longer piece.

Ordway structured the program with a continuum of moods in mind. The opener is the Beethoven overture, one of that composer’s lesser-heard works, which is “heavy and high-energy.” The Wagner, while varied, tends to be calmer, more lyrical.

And Ordway’s symphony, which constitutes the second half of the program, starts out tranquilly and builds from there.

The orchestra of the Curtis Institute, in Philadelphia, where Ordway studied conducting, will record the symphony in December.

Ordway has also composed two full settings of the Mass, and numerous chamber, solo and choral works, many of which have been performed, recorded and broadcast by top ensembles throughout the United States and in Europe.

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