The Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia continues its 50th Anniversary Season on Saturday, November 16, 7:30pm, at Old Cabell Hall on the Grounds of the University of Virginia and Sunday, November 17, 3:30pm, at Charlottesville High School’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center.

Kate Tamarkin guest conducts both concerts at the invitation of Music Director Benjamin Rous.

Tamarkin was the Charlottesville Symphony’s Music Director and a Professor of Music at the University of Virginia from 2006-2017. Upon her retirement from UVA in 2017, she was named Music Director Laureate. Previously, she held directorships at the Monterey Symphony (CA), Vermont Symphony, East Texas Symphony and the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra (WI). She was also the Associate Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under the late Eduardo Mata.

Still active in the local music community, she is a Certified Music Practitioner on the harp, a Musician in Residence at the UVA Medical Center and Program Coordinator for Hospice of the Piedmont’s “Music by the Bedside.”

Ms. Tamarkin has selected some of her favorite symphonic works for the November 16-17 concerts. The program opens with a ballet suite from Manuel de Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, a work infused with the colors and rhythms of Spanish music, dancing and folk traditions.

One of Maurice Ravel’s “greatest hits”, his Mother Goose Suite is a collection of short pieces inspired by the world of children’s fairy tales from seventeenth and eighteenth-century France.

Czech composer Antonín Dvořák is featured in two works. His extroverted interpretation of Serbian folk music is heard in the Slavonic Dance No. 7. The well-known Symphony No. 8 in G major evokes a summer’s day replete with birdsongs and hunting horn calls.

The orchestra’s November concerts are underwritten in part by the Vesta Lee Gordon Fund at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation. Kate Tamarkin’s appearance is made possible by the Angus Macaulay Visiting Artist Fund and gifts made in her honor by anonymous friends. Major support has also been provided by the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

Free parking is available in the UVA Central Grounds Parking Garage, located on Emmet Street South on Saturday nights and at Charlottesville High School’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center on Sunday afternoons. The Charlottesville Free Trolley stops at McCormick Road near the UVA Amphitheater, in close proximity to Old Cabell Hall. Both venues are wheelchair accessible.

Single tickets are $10-$53 for adults and $10 for students, and may be purchased at the University of Virginia Arts Box Office, (434) 924-3376, 12:00-5:00pm, Tuesday through Friday in the lobby of the UVA Drama Building at 109 Culbreth Road, or online at www.artsboxoffice.virginia.edu.