Sinfonietta Nova opens its sixth season with a concert at the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in West Windsor on Saturday, October 26, at 7:30 p.m. From fairy godmothers to gingerbread houses, the season looks at music inspired by fairy tales and introduces audiences to familiar classical music favorites as well as some lesser-known pieces.
The regional orchestra led by Gail Lee of West Windsor features Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella Overture, the divertimento from Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Fairy’s Kiss, as well as Stravinsky’s arrangement of the Bluebird Pas de Deux from Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. The concert will conclude with Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Suite.
The orchestra will also perform the Horn Concerto No. 1 by Richard Strauss, showcasing the talents of Rutgers University horn professor and Princeton Symphony principal hornist Doug Lundeen.
Lee had the idea of starting Sinfonietta Nova in the early 2000s as a way of giving music educators a chance to share their talents with the public. “The Princeton area is so culturally rich — just look at the sizes of the West Windsor-Plainsboro high school orchestras and the blooming music programs in the local public schools,” says Lee. “I encountered many people who went away for school and work, and came back to settle with family, etc. I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to provide a place for some of these returning musicians to seriously maintain their musical skills?”
The orchestra’s first concert was an all-Beethoven program in 2008. “The beauty of Sinfonietta Nova is that everyone is there for the love of it — they really want to be there,” says Lee. “They love the music making. Even with our high standards, the orchestra maintains a noncompetitive environment. That’s pretty unparalleled.”
Members in the group include music educators, private music teachers, and freelance musicians who work from New York City to Trenton, and moonlighting musicians with other professional day jobs. One of the violin players is Theresa Liu, a 1992 graduate of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School. She studied at Rutgers, Stanford, and Hunter College. A Princeton resident, she is a senior copywriter at Princeton University Press.
Lee graduated from North Brunswick Township High School, and completed her undergraduate music degree at Rutgers University. After receiving her master’s degree in orchestral conducting at Northwestern University, she became the associate conductor with the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra. Lee returned to New Jersey and conducted the New Brunswick Chamber Orchestra for several years. She has also conducted ensembles at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and the 2007 New Jersey All-State Orchestra.
“The fairy tales idea was brewing for quite some time,” says Lee. “I put all the pieces in my fairy tale bucket, so to speak, and voila. I actually have more pieces I want to do than I can fit in this season, so there is bound to be more fairy tale music in some future season to come.”
Concert, Sinfonietta Nova, Prince of Peace Church, 177 Princeton-Hightstown Road, West Windsor. Saturday, October 26, 7:30 p.m. $15. 609-462-4984 or www.sinfoniettanova.org.
