Lipscomb welcomes the Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra to campus

Lacey Klotz | 

Music City is known as a premiere destination for quality music, but it isn’t often that one gets a chance to hear music inspired by local community service.    

On Tuesday, Feb. 23, the Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra will perform in Lipscomb’s Collins Alumni Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. as a part of its winter concert series.

The evening will also include a cantata inspired by Thistle Farms, a local program for women who have survived addiction, prostitution and trafficking.  

Those in the Lipscomb community featured among the 88 musicians are Lipscomb’s Mark McDonald, assistant professor in the Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering, playing the tuba; and Grace Kimbrough, a recent graduate of Lipscomb’s School of Music, playing the violin.

The orchestra will also perform on Tuesday, March 1, at Saint George’s Episcopal Church located at 4715 Harding Road, Nashville, at 7:30 p.m.

“The Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra is a fine community orchestra and we are honored to host this special opportunity,” said Steve Rhodes, director of instrumental ensembles at Lipscomb.

Conducted by Christopher Norton, a professor of music at Belmont University, the Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra is an all-volunteer community orchestra, dedicated to giving amateur and professional orchestral musicians opportunities to perform, while providing high-quality symphonic music to a wide variety of audiences, free of charge.

This season’s program is entitled “New World” and features three works that celebrate a process of redemption including change, transformation and renewal.

The works include:

  • “Firebird Suite,” by Igor Stravinsky;
  • Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony “No. 9 in E Minor, Opus 95 (From the New World)”; and
  • “Magdalene, A Cantata” by American composer, Anthony Plog.

A highlight of the “New World” program is the world premiere of Plog’s “Magdalene, A Cantata,” which he created to celebrate the women of the Thistle Farm’s Magdalene community.

Thistle Farms, founded by Rev. Becca Stevens, helps women with a history of prostitution and drug abuse, by providing a two-year residential program that includes education and training through speaking events and immersion workshops, as well as advocacy services for up to 700 women annually.

The sung and spoken text featured in the cantata contains descriptions of community members’ efforts to overcome adversity, in their own words. The performance will feature a narrator, Donna Dozier, who is also a Magdalene graduate.

Plog’s cantata will also feature Nashville vocal soloists Kristine Stroupe and Abby Burke, as well as the choir of Saint George’s Episcopal Church and Tennessee State University’s Meistersingers.

“This concert is an opportunity for our students not only to hear a performance of two classics of the orchestral repertoire, but Plog’s ‘Magdalene, A Cantata’ invites everyone, through the creativity of the spoken word melded with music, to hear the story of a most special program that touches the lives of the underserved in our community,” said Rhodes.

This concert is free and open to the public. For more information please visit: info [at] nashvillephilharmonic.org.