Event Calendar
Come see us this season and look whose been here over the past seasons.
POSTPONED~POSTPONED!
This event will be re-scheduled for a later date.
Meet a Founding Mother of the United States! The Morgan Opera House premiers a staged reading of “The Fairer Sex” written by Stephen Cedars. Saturday, September 30 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, October 1 at 2 pm. Mercy Otis Warren is renowned as one of the principal activists and writers in the years leading up to the American Revolution. This original play is set in the early 1800s, as a conversation among her, and John and Abagail Adams, with visits from their youthful selves popping up throughout. The play is likewise sprinkled with appearances by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and sundry other characters, who provide all manner of commentary on what she did to further the revolutionary cause. Directed by Susan Forbes, a past Chair of the Wells College Theater Department, the play will be a staged reading featuring members of the community. The performances are free, but a $10 donation is suggested.
Open Cast Call is September 25th at 6:30pm. 2 rehearsals that week. Tech rehearsal Fri Sept 29.
As a tribute to his wife, Gloria, George Peter started the Gloria Ann Barnell Peter playwright competition which solicits original works by playwrights, selects the best scripts and then presents them to our audiences. The Peter family has generously continued this tradition. For more information, call 315-364-5347.
POSTPONED~POSTPONED!
This event will be be re-scheduled for a later date.
Meet a Founding Mother of the United States! The Morgan Opera House premiers a staged reading of “The Fairer Sex” written by Stephen Cedars. Saturday, September 30 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, October 1 at 2 pm. Mercy Otis Warren is renowned as one of the principal activists and writers in the years leading up to the American Revolution. This original play is set in the early 1800s, as a conversation among her, and John and Abagail Adams, with visits from their youthful selves popping up throughout. The play is likewise sprinkled with appearances by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and sundry other characters, who provide all manner of commentary on what she did to further the revolutionary cause. Directed by Susan Forbes, a past Chair of the Wells College Theater Department, the play will be a staged reading featuring members of the community. The performances are free, but a $10 donation is suggested.
Open Cast Call is September 25th at 6:30pm. 2 rehearsals that week. Tech rehearsal Fri Sept 29.
As a tribute to his wife, Gloria, George Peter started the Gloria Ann Barnell Peter playwright competition which solicits original works by playwrights, selects the best scripts and then presents them to our audiences. The Peter family has generously continued this tradition. For more information, call 315-364-5347.
Returning to the opera house after 13 years!
Donations welcomed—$20 suggested.
The musical partnership between consummate performer Alasdair Fraser, “the Michael Jordan of Scottish fiddling,” and brilliant Californian cellist, Natalie Haas, spans the full spectrum between intimate chamber music and ecstatic dance energy. Over the last 16 years of creating a buzz at festivals and concert halls across the world, they have truly set the standard for fiddle and cello in traditional music. They continue to thrill audiences internationally with their virtuosic playing, their near-telepathic understanding, and thejoyful spontaneity and sheer physical presence of their music.
Fraser has a concert and recording career spanning over 30 years, with a long list of awards, accolades, radio and television credits, and feature performances on top movie soundtracks (Last of the Mohicans, Titanic, etc.). In 2011, he was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame. Haas, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, is one of the most sought after cellists in traditional music today. She has performed and recorded with a who’s who of the fiddle world including Mark O’Connor, Natalie MacMaster, Irish supergroups Solas and Altan, Liz Carroll, Dirk Powell, Brittany Haas, Darol Anger, Jeremy Kittel, Hanneke Cassel, Laura Cortese, and many more.
This seemingly unlikely pairing of fiddle and cello is the fulfillment of a long-standing musical dream for Fraser. His search eventually led him to find a cellist who could help return the cello to its historical role at the rhythmic heart of Scottish dance music, where it stood for hundreds of years before being relegated to the orchestra. The duo’s debut recording, Fire & Grace, won the coveted the Scots Trad Music “Album of the Year” award, the Scottish equivalent of a Grammy. Since its release, the two have gone on to record three more critically acclaimed albums that blend a profound understanding of the Scottish tradition with cutting-edge string explorations. In additional to performing, they both have motivated generations of string players through their teaching at fiddle camps across the globe.
The Morgan Opera House proudly announces the return of the Skaneateles String Quintet, Sunday October 29th at 4 pm. This stellar ensemble features Yoojin Lee and Laura Smith, violins; Hee Jung Yang and Willie Ford-Smith, violas; Lindsay Groves, cello. Special guest Gerald Wolf on harmonium. They will perform selections from the well-loved repertoire of Mozart and Brahms:
Mozart, Quintet in G minor, K. 516
Dvorak, Op 47
Brahms, Quintet No. 2 in G major, Op. 111
Free, $20 Suggested donation
This event originally scheduled for Sunday, October 8th, has now been re-scheduled for Sunday, November 5th.
Local author Tom Wilber will discuss his book, “Vanishing Point: The Search for a B-25 Bomber Crew Lost on the WWII Home Front”. Hosted by the Book Lover’s Ball committee.
The beloved klezmer music returns to the Morgan Opera House on Saturday, Nov. 18th at 7:30PM. Though the Klezmer Kings dissolved, many of them live on in CUKE! Cornell University Klezmer Ensemble. They will play several genres of klezmer music: American klezmer from New York and Philadelphia of the 1910s and 1920s; the repertoire of New York clarinetist Dave Tarras from the late 1930s to mid-1940s; and Russian (Ukraine/Belarus) klezmer from pre-revolutionary times. Led by Ryan Zawel, trombonist and past member of the Joel Rubin Jewish Music Ensemble and Klezmer Kings. CUKE is a student organization of Cornell University, but also includes staff and community members. True to klezmer tradition, they play an eclectic collection of instruments and will appear at MOH playing violins, viola, clarinet, mandolin, cello, trombone, sousaphone, piano, and drum set. Be prepared to enjoy the variety and vigor of their performance.
The concert is free but a donation of $10 to benefit the Morgan Opera House would be appreciated.
Klezmer was originally the ritual and celebratory music of the Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe, where it developed over the course of many centuries. Brought to North America with the Jewish immigration wave from Russia and other Eastern European countries during the period 1881-1924, a modern klezmer tradition developed in the urban centers, particularly in New York City, although it subsequently went into a decline due to the forces of acculturation and assimilation. Since the 1970s, a dynamic revival of this tradition has been taking place. It has since become one of the most visible transnational music and culture movements involving many thousands of participants on five continents. The recent popularity of klezmer music has brought it far from its roots in medieval minstrel and Jewish ritual and into the sphere of mainstream culture, reaching as far as “Sex and the City.” It has inspired parallel developments in jazz/improvised music, such as the Radical Jewish Culture movement in New York’s Downtown Scene, as well as spawning a new genre of klezmer-influenced art music compositions by composers such as Golijov and Schoenfield.
Bones East, a trombone octet will give a concert of seasonal and classical music at the Morgan Opera House, Saturday, December 2nd at 2:00 PM in conjunction with Aurora’s annual “Christmas in Aurora” celebration. Family friendly renditions of tunes both familiar and original will include “Silent Night” featuring soloist Dave DiGennaro; Haydn’s “Achieved is Thy Glorious Work”, directed by Bill Harris; and “Angels We Have Heard on High”, a stirring arrangement by Tom Camp as well as many more familiar pieces that brass instruments enhance. The 8 talented musicians are part of the 25-30 members Trombones East group which was founded by Howard Kelly in the early 1980’s and has performed at colleges, universities, churches and community events throughout Central New York. The volunteer group includes a variety of musicians, mostly semi-professionals, retirees and students. William Harris, former principal trombonist with the Syracuse Symphony and music professor at Syracuse University and Onondaga Community College serves as conductor and Tom Camp as arranger and co-conductor.
Monetary donations will benefit the King Ferry Food Pantry.