Ithaca College

Richard Strange will visit Ithaca College as a guest conductor at two free concerts. A longtime leader of wind ensembles and orchestras, Strange will conduct the Ithaca College Wind Ensemble on Wednesday, December 8, and the Ithaca College Concert and Symphonic Bands on Thursday, December 9. Both performances will start at 8:15 p.m. in Ford Hall in the James J. Whalen Center for Music.

On December 8, Strange will take the podium for the wind ensemble's performance of Milhaud's Suite Française and Fillmore's His Honor. That concert will also feature music director Stephen Peterson conducting works by Schubert, Harbison, and Smith.

On December 9, Strange will conduct the concert and symphonic bands in Wagner's Elsa's Procession to the Cathedral and Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever. The ensemble's regular conductors Mark Fonder and Henry Neubert will conduct the groups in works by Jacob, Tull, Dahl, and Bennett.

Richard Strange is director of bands/professor of music emeritus at Arizona State University. Presently he is the music director and founding conductor of the Tempe Symphony Orchestra. While in Pittsburgh, as director of bands at Carnegie-Mellon University (1961-74), he conducted both the Carnegie Civic Symphony Orchestra and the Butler County Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted, judged, or given clinics in Austria, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Guam, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.

Strange is replacing Frederick Fennell, who was scheduled to guest conduct on these concerts but was recently hospitalized.

Contributed by Erik Kibelsbeck