2018 Heartland Marimba Festival: Marimba Orchestra in Concert
Venue: Burruss Auditorium, Blacksburg
Organizations: Heartland Marimba, Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts
Date: Saturday, July 14, 2018
Time: 5:00 - 7:00 PM
Event Types: Music
Cost: Free
Description:
The Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts presents the 2018 Heartland Marimba Festival in concert on Saturday, July 14, 2018 in Burruss Auditorium on the campus of Virginia Tech.

The concert featuring the Marimba Orchestra and performances by soloist Nathan Daughtrey, the HMQuartet, the HMOrchestra, Escape X Duo, student ensembles of the HMFestival and Percussion Alchemy Duo (Tom Marceau and Rob Sanderl).

The Heartland Marimba Festival is coming to Blacksburg, VA from July 11-15 with three free concerts for the public. Performers include high school, college, and professional percussionists from across the country.

“Audiences can expect to hear a variety of music for marimba, including such familiar tunes as ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’ and a Rossini medley, both arranged for a large marimba orchestra,” Stevens said. “New works will also be performed by the Heartland Marimba Quartet and my percussion duo, Escape Ten, which will perform ‘Clear Midnight,’ an enthralling marimba duo composed by Eastman School of Music professor Michael Burritt,” said Annie Stevens, an assistant professor in the School of Performing Arts at Virginia Tech.

The Heartland Marimba Festival began in 2014 through the vision and leadership of solo artist Matthew Coley. It is an organization that celebrates the marimba, its music, and its performers during an intensive summer festival, a series of winter holiday concerts, and biannual chamber music tours. A multifaceted organization, it offers an in-depth academy for high school and college students and aspiring performers, as well as a summer music workshop for youth ages 4-13 and community adults.

It publishes many of the compositions it champions and is actively pursuing the creation of a new market for marimba performance outside of the university. The Heartland Marimba Collective and Quartet, the public faces of the Festival, showcase the talents of students and accomplished professional artists in regional tours throughout various parts of the country. The organization strives to bring the unique music of the marimba to a wider audience and to build more opportunities for the art form and performers.

The mission of Heartland Marimba is to reach many audiences in order to support and advance the marimba, its music, composers, and performers in all ways. This is accomplished through these four components: community outreach, educational experiences, generating new repertoire, and opportunities for professionals.

Links:

• http://www.heartlandmarimbafestival.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/HeartlandMarimba
• https://www.twitter.com/HeartlndMarimba
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8lcIbkciHJS4_yV9nnCAGA/videos
• https://www.instagram.com/heartlandmarimba/

The marimba, a larger version of the xylophone, is a percussion instrument consisting of a set of wooden bars with the same orientation as a piano. The bars are struck with mallets; some works require the performer to use four mallets, two in each hand.

Tickets are not required for the Blacksburg performances.

For more information on the Festival, visit: https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2018/06/sopa-heartlandmarimbafestival.html or https://www.performingarts.vt.edu/index.php/events/view/heartland-marimba-festival or https://www.facebook.com/events/370783273444300/.