The new program, “Clarinet Super Kids!,” is being offered by EMU鈥檚 preparatory music program for students in third-, fourth- or fifth-grade who show interest in joining their school band and playing a woodwind instrument. Students will use the Clarin茅o, a new instrument designed specifically for this age group.

“The skills learned will prepare students for enjoyment and success on flute, clarinet or saxophone in their school band programs,” said Les Nicholas, instructor and Principal Clarinetist of the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival.

Weekly classes are 50 minutes long and will meet 14 times during the spring semester. Tuition is $185 per semester.

Parents and students may look at the Preparatory Music website to learn more about this opportunity.聽 .聽 Classes are scheduled for January.

For more information on the Clarinet Super Kids! program call, 540-432-4277; or email selah.shenk@emu.edu.

Links for information on the Clarin茅o: or

Joan Griffing, music professor and department chair, and Lynne Mackey, associate professor of music

Joan Griffing, violinist, and Lynne Mackey, pianist, will play a varied repertoire including music by Piazzolla, the Argentinian composer known for his tangos, and Milhaud, a French composer influenced by his visits to Brazil.

They will be assisted by Leslie Nicholas on clarinet and Lisa Wright on cello.

Dr. Griffing teaches violin and viola, coaches chamber music and conducts the EMU orchestra. She is also concertmaster of the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival Orchestra and the Shenandoah Symphony Orchestra and is a violinist with the Virginia Symphony and the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, N.C.

She earned her bachelor and master of music degrees from Indiana University and her doctor of musical arts degree in violin performance from Ohio State University.

Dr. Mackey has performed in solo and chamber music settings in the United States and the Netherlands and is currently on the tour roster of the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She is a member of the Gee-Mackey Duo with cellist David Gee, a duo formed in 2004 that performs widely in the Mid-Atlantic states.

A graduate of The Juilliard School, Mackey holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music.

Admission to the program is free; donations are welcomed for the EMU music student scholarship fund.

The 25-member orchestra, conducted by Maria Lorcas, will perform “Carmen Suite No. 1” by Georges Bizet and “West Side Story Suite” by Leonard Bernstein. Ashley Wright will be featured soloist on the “Clarinet Concerto” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Jessica Hostetter and Sean Hsu will perform “Concerto for Two Violins” by Johann Sebastian Bach with string orchestra.

Ashley Wright

Ms. Wright, the daughter of Douglas and Kimberly Wright, is a senior at Turner Ashby High School and has played the clarinet since sixth grade. Chosen by audition to perform the evening’s featured solo, Wright has been a member of the Youth Orchestra for four years.

A student of Leslie Nicholas, she was chosen by audition for District Band and the All-Virginia Band and has participated in the George Mason University Honor Band. An active student musician, she served as the TA Marching Knights senior drum major this year, performed in bands that accompanied the school musicals the last four years and is a member of the TA Jazz Ensemble. Wright also serves as secretary of TA’s Tri-M Music Honors Society, and she plans to major in music education in college.

The 17-member Junior Strings ensemble, directed by Sharon M.D. Miller, will perform a variety of music including “Rondeau” from “Masterpiece Theater” by Mouret, a Bach chorale and “Fiddle Fest” by local composer James E. Clemens.

Junior string members are from Rockingham, Augusta, Page and Shenandoah counties and from West Virginia.

The Shenandoah Valley Youth Symphony Orchestra is part of EMU’s Preparatory Music Program. The program also includes instrumental music instruction (violin, viola, cello, guitar, flute, clarinet, harp, piano) and Musikgarten (ages birth through 6). Sharon Miller is administrative director for the program that enrolls over 325 students from 6 Virginia counties and West Virginia.

A five dollar donation is requested at the door to assist in the operation of these groups.

Information about the Preparatory Music Program may be obtain from EMU’s web site ()or by calling 540-432-4277.

Prolific German composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) scarcely had time to catch his breath. No sooner did he compose a cantata for the Sunday worship service at the St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Leipzig where he was cantor than it was time to work on the next.

And Bach didn’t have access to computer software to help expedite this major undertaking. The melodies flowing from his mind were committed to parchment by hand and had to be duplicated manually for the orchestral and choral participants in the service.

Not only that, but he had to rehearse and conduct soloists, chorus and orchestra and serve as organist. And that was only a small part of his job description as official musician for four churches in the city of Leipzig.

The program theme, “Mostly Bach,” at 草莓社区 highlighted the richness and diversity of the composer’s massive output, opening Sunday, June 11, with his monumental “Mass in B Minor.” Featured soloists were Sharla Nafziger, soprano; Jennifer Cooper, alto; Kenneth Gayle, tenor; and Thomas Jones, bass; with Marvin Mills, organ continuo and the festival choir and orchestra.

The festival concluded Sunday, June 18, with a “Leipzig Service,” a sermon in music modeled after the liturgical pattern of Bach’s time. Many festival attendees deemed the service, which included a portion of Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio,” as a “highlight” of the weeklong program.

Others might point to another distinct feature of this year’s festival, the return of guest artist Jeremy Wall, a pianist and arranger who has recorded a dozen well-received classical-jazz “World Beat” albums with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman.

Wall, a founding member of the 1980’s jazz group, “Spyro Gyra,” first appeared at the Bach Festival in 2004.

“The universal greatness of Bach’s music allows it to be adapted to other idioms,” Wall said during a rehearsal. “The harmonic syntax of Bach’s music has a common ground with the language of jazz that allows one to take some of his musical structures and adapt them into jazz arrangements.”

But, he added, “the process evolved out of a process of living with Bach’s music.”

During the June 17 evening performance of Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio,” audience members were visibly moved as Wall and Pete Spaar, principal bass, and clarinetist Leslie Nicholas took sections of Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” and segued into a series of jazz improvisations that seemlessly combined the musical languages.

“This may be the first time this particular Bach composition has been performed publicly in this way,” said , artistic director and conductor of the week-long homage to Bach and his music.

With 2006 marking the 250th anniversary of another musical genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Austrian composer’s music was featured on two of the seven daily noon chamber music programs held at Asbury United Methodist Church in downtown Harrisonburg. His “Symphony No. 35 in D Major” opened the June 16 evening festival program.

A recurring phenomenon of the Bach Festival is the diverse group of singers and players who gather in Lehman Auditorium for brief and intense rehearsal sessions and almost immediately sound like they’ve performed together for years.

Violinist Amy Helmuth Glick of Orrville, Ohio, is among the instrumentalists who returns every year to participate in the festival, having missed just one of the 14 seasons.

“I get to come back and stay with my parents, Ervie and Mary Glick, and to make wonderful music,” Glick said. “I especially enjoy the opportunity to play Bach’s choral works.” Glick, who attended EMU 1990-91, is a free-lance violinist in the Northeast Ohio area and is a member of the Akron Symphony. Ervie Glick was a member of the festival chorus.

Paul E. Groff, a bass in the festival choir, was intrigued by the fusion of Bach’s music with the jazz improvisations of Jeremy Wall and his colleagues. He felt that the inclusion of two different styles “added life to the concerts and helped make Bach feel more contemporary.”

A graphic designer from Harrisonburg and 1990 EMU graduate, Groff relished “the opportunity to sing with top-notch musicians from across the country.”

In opening the Sunday Leipzig service, Dr. Nafziger told the audience that “we’ve spent the week playing and praying Bach,” adding: “Perhaps through this experience Bach is teaching us that at their best praying and playing are one and the same thing.”

“We’re delighted that the community embraces the Bach Festival as ‘our’ music festival,” said Beth K. Aracena, associate professor of music at EMU and Bach program coordinator. “The noon concerts at Asbury United Methodist Church were extremely well-attended, and the strong turnout at Lehman Auditorium demonstrates this community’s commitment to supporting quality performing arts programs,” she added.

Next year’s Bach Festival will be June 10-17, 2007, on the theme, “Bach and Some Admirers.” Renowned pianist Janina Fialkowska will return to the festival with her interpretations of Chopin’s piano concertos.