July 31, Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra
Location: The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut Street, Portsmouth
Concert underwriter, The Music Hall

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The Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra follows in the best rich traditions of community music. Founded in 1997 as the Seacoast Community Chamber Orchestra, the Portsmouth Symphony is a classical era-sized orchestra of about forty-five members consisting of strings, winds, horns and trumpets in pairs, and tympani -- typical of orchestras of Mozart and Haydns day. The PSO also calls on a talented array of auxiliary members when performing works requiring extra winds and brass, as well as for Pops-type concerts. In the Fall of 2004, the Portsmouth Symphony was thrilled to sign Philip Lauriat, the founding Artistic Director of Granite State Opera as its new conductor. Mr. Lauriat studied Conducting at Tanglewood and was the first student ever to win both the singing and conducting competitions at The Eastman School of Music and Westminster Choir College. His reputation for delivering both singing and orchestra of stunning quality are well-known throughout the state.

PROGRAM:
Romeo & Juliet Tchaikovsky
Overture/Fantasy W. Mozart
Rhapsody for Orchestra Toyama
Hoe Down from Rodeo Variations on a Shaker Melody Copland
Fugue on Yankee Doodle Thompson
A Trumpeter's Lullaby Anderson
Three Marches Sousa

The Music Hall, a non-profit performing arts center, entertains more than 70,000 patrons annually with film, music, theater, and dance performances. The historic 900-seat theater, built in 1878, is the oldest in New Hampshire, the second oldest in New England, and the fourteenth oldest operating in the United States. In the fall of 2003 the U.S. Senate voted The Music Hall onto the list of "America's Treasures," including it in a program sponsored by the National Park Service and The National Trust for Historic Preservation. In addition to its own programming, The Music Hall has hosted hundreds of benefits and celebrations for community organizations. On August 8, 1905, the international press corps covering the treaty dined on the stage of The Music Hall, as guests of Manager F.W.Hartford. After the dinner they enjoyed a vaudeville show. On August 28th members of the diplomatic delegation attended a minstrel show at The Music Hall. And in September 1906, on the First Anniversary of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty signing, The Music Hall hosted the first public showing of the newsreel films from the Treaty summer of 1905.