Washington -- “The President’s Own” Marine Chamber Orchestra will perform its final concert of the summer on Saturday, Aug. 26 at Northern Virginia Community College’s Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center in Alexandria at 7:30 p.m., featuring a program of all-American works.
Admission and parking are both free; no tickets are required.
“As we celebrate our 225th anniversary this year, I wanted to pay homage to our tagline: ‘Playing America’s music since 1798,’ said Assistant Director 1st Lt. Darren Y. Lin, the conductor of the concert. “There are many talented American composers whose work has not received the recognition that it deserves, so I wanted to shine a spotlight on them and their work.”
To this end, the concert will feature Jennifer Higdon’s colorful To The Point for string quartet; Romeo Cascarino’s reverent dedication to those who have fallen in battle, Blades of Grass, featuring an English horn solo by Master Sgt. Joseph DeLuccio; the unconventional and eccentric Sinfonietta No. 1 for Strings by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson; and Ned Rorem’s String Symphony, which Lin programmed after discovering that Rorem was acquainted with Jennifer Higdon.
“Ned Rorem passed in November of 2022. I was listening to his compositions and was lucky enough to discover his ‘String Symphony,” Lin said. “Upon further research, I found that Jennifer Higdon, a close friend of the Marine Band, studied with Rorem at the Curtis Institute of Music and I wanted to pair their works together.”
Additionally, the audience will be able to experience the Marine Chamber Orchestra performing each of these pieces for the first time, as all of the pieces on this concert’s program are completely new additions to the ensemble's repertoire.
The Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center is located at 4915 East Campus Drive in Alexandria, Va. Free parking is available in the adjacent garage.
Program and notes
Directions and parking