It's had to believe that we have been doing Summer Strings for ten years. What started as a way to give students a way to play music together in the summer has grown into something that string players around here look forward to all year. This year's concert has a little less in the way of pop music than previous years, and it will open with the first performance ever (a world premiere, if you will) of my "May Day Overture" a piece that I completed on the first of May. All of the other music on the program that I have either written or arranged I have already made available through the IMSLP and Dropbox, and I will upload the Overture after the performance on Tuesday. This year's program will also have two arrangements by Nina Woodgate (who has left Illinois for Michigan, where I hope she will start her own Summer Strings orchestra one day), and two arrangements by Ka-Wai Yu.
The people who play in this group range in age from about 4 to their later 70s. Some people have been playing all of their lives, and some have only been playing a year or two. Some people travel a few blocks, and some drive for an hour or more. Some people come to every single rehearsal, and some people only come to one or two (we are very flexible about attendance since it is summer, and people tend to go away from time to time). It is a community-supported organization, and the string teachers and conductors that run the program all volunteer their time, so we do not charge tuition of any kind.
The concert is free, and the weather looks like it will be beautiful.
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