Celebrate Music - ISO Symphony Benefit Concert

The InterSchool Orchestra of New York's Symphony, conducted by Music Director Jonathan Strasser, will perform a benefit concert at Alice Tully Hall, Thursday, June 2, 2005 at 8:00 PM. WQXR's Robert Sherman will be Master of Ceremonies. Benjamin Grobman will make his Alice Tully Hall debut playing Richard Strauss' Concerto No. 1 for Horn in Eb Major.

(PRWEB) May 15, 2005 -- The InterSchool Orchestras (ISO) Symphony, with Master of Ceremonies Robert Sherman, performs a benefit concert at Alice Tully Hall on June 2, 2005 at 8:00 PM.

The InterSchool Orchestras of New York (ISO) Symphony, conducted by Music Director Jonathan Strasser, will present a gala benefit concert featuring WQXRs Robert Sherman as Master of Ceremonies. Benjamin Grobman, winner of the 2005 Constance Mensch Concerto Competition, will perform Richard Strauss Concerto No. 1 for Horn in Eb Major. The concert is on Thursday, June 2, 2005 at 8:00 PM at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. Tickets for the benefit concert range from $50-$1,000, with a $25 student ticket available with ID. The concert will benefit ISOs outreach programs.

The program will also include Brahms Academic Festival Overture, the Intermezzo and Barcarolle from Offenbachs Tales of Hoffman and Symphonic Metamorphosis on a Theme of Carl Maria von Weber by Hindemith. Mr. Sherman will narrate Benjamin Brittens Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra.

Benjamin Grobman, principal horn of the ISO Symphony, is a senior at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts, where he is principal horn of the Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Band. He is a student of Sharon Moe at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division, and is principal of the divisions top Philharmonic Orchestra. As a winner of the 2004 Lincoln Center Young Artist Chamber Music Competition, Mr. Grobman had the opportunity to perform with the LaGuardia Brass Quintet at Alice Tully Hall. An aspiring conductor at LaGuardia High School, he enjoys a close collaboration with conducting teacher Lucinda Santiago. Mr. Grobman is the recipient of the school's Julius Grossman Conducting Award. On June 2 he will make his solo debut at Alice Tully Hall with the ISO Symphony.

Broadcaster, writer, teacher and radio personality, Robert Sherman is probably best known for his work at WQXR where he has been Program Director, Executive Producer and (currently) Senior Consultant. For twenty-three years he presided over The Listening Room," and he continues to present The McGraw-Hill Companies Young Artists Showcase" for the station. Since their inception, he has hosted the Avery Fisher Career Grant Award presentations at Lincoln Center, as well as the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday specials from the Harlem School of the Arts. His multiple award-winning folk series, Woodys Children", is now heard in New York on Public Radios WFUV.

Mr. Sherman is on the faculties of the Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music. A former music critic for the New York Times, Sherman has contributed hundreds of music columns to the paper over the years. He published two books with Victor Borge, is the co-author of The Complete Idiots Guide to Classical Music", and with his brother, Alexander Sherman, compiled a pictorial biography of their mother, the renowned pianist Nadia Reisenberg. Increasingly active as a concert narrator, Robert Sherman has performed with such ensembles as Canadian Brass, the United States Military Academy (West Point) Band, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and Philharmonia Virtuosi.

The ISO Symphony, an accomplished youth orchestra, is comprised of over seventy young musicians from public and independent schools in the metropolitan area. The Symphony is a full scholarship ensemble and performs in a variety of venues, including Symphony Space, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. Outreach and community concerts take Symphony members to such places as St. Michaels Church in Litchfield, Connecticut, the Stanley Isaacs Neighborhood House in Manhattan, Mary Queen of Heaven Church in Brooklyn and the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Most concerts are free or very low cost. A benefit concert will be held at Alice Tully Hall, June 2, 2005.

The InterSchool Orchestras of New York (ISO) is a youth orchestra program consisting of five orchestras, a symphonic band, a chamber music program and a percussion workshop, for players, ages 6-19, of all levels. Students come from public and independent schools from New Yorks five boroughs and beyond. For further information on the Symphony and all ISO programs please call Ellen Brofman at (212) 410-0370 or visit our website: www.isorch.org.

1556 Third Avenue, Suite 601
New York, NY 10128
Tel: (212) 410-0370
Fax: (212) 410-1606
www.isorch.org   
         
Contact: Ellen Brofman   
(212) 410-0370 (Day)
(917) 400-7515 (Evening)
For Immediate Release

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