All Aboard!  When settlers came to settle in north Texas by wagon train and rails, they brought their music.  And Saturday, September 19, the Mesquite Symphony Orchestra will celebrate those beginnings on the Texas frontier!  At 6 p.m., all audience members are invited to the Gala opening reception, and at 7:30 p.m. the concert, at the Mesquite Arts Center, 1527 N. Galloway.

Conductor Brad Everett Cawyer will lead the orchestra in “The American Frontier” arranged by Calvin Custer, Rachmaninov’s brilliant Piano Concerto No. 2, with soloist Thiago X. Nascimento, and in music by Mussorgsky, Dvorak, Strauss and Florence Price that paints a musical picture of the place – its rivers, railroads, and even Mesquite’s significant oak tree!

 The season will take listeners back to holiday celebrations with the diverse settlers who came here, their children’s dreams, music we listened to on the radio, and the rodeo, with Aaron Copland’s ballet, “Rodeo” and other music about America’s great Western frontier.  There will be other classics through the season, including Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with guest Fiona Shea as soloist.

 Tickets or season tickets?  Check the website – www.mesquitesymphony.org - or stop by the box office from an hour before the performance.  Tickets available from $5-$20 with discounts for seniors and children.  Concert supported in part by the Mesquite Arts Council. 

Mesquite Symphony Orchestra, performing at the Mesquite Arts Center, 1527 N.Galloway and celebrating our 29th season.  

It's 'A Dickens Christmas' from the Mesquite Symphony Orchestra!

The Mesquite Symphony Orchestra continues its Saturday night concerts December 20 with the orchestra’s annual “Music of the Season.”  This year, “A Dickens Christmas” includes music from Christmases past and present and the audience’s traditional sing-along of holiday songs.

The orchestra will be joined by actors from Mesquite Community Theatre as characters from Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”  The audience just may meet Ebenezer Scrooge – and of course, Tiny Tim!  The concert is at 7 p.m. at the Mesquite Arts Center, 1527 N. Galloway.  Conductor and music director is Brad Everett Cawyer.

Settling into happy memories of “Christmas past,” the orchestra will take the audience through “Music of the Season” from the Nativity and Adam’s “O, Holy Night” to scenes of jolly old England with “Fantasia on Greensleeves” by Vaughn Williams, Delius’s own sparkling version of a holiday sleigh ride and the audience sing-along of traditional carols.  The orchestra returns to the present - and the future? - with Morton Gould’s arrangement of “Good King Wenceslas,” Peter Schickele’s “Celebration with Bells,” Smith’s “A Rhapsody on Christmas Carols” and Chadwick’s “Noel. 

Our Dickens characters will narrate “Twas the night before Christmas” with the orchestra, and help close the evening with the “Holiday Pops” sing-along and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas!”

To reserve tickets, call the Mesquite Arts Center, 972-216-6444, or stop by the box office, open at 6:00 p.m. on December 20, an hour before the performance.  General admission tickets are $12 adults, $6 students.  For groups of 10 or more, tickets are $10 adults, $5 students. These Saturday night concerts are made possible in part by a grant from the Mesquite Arts Council.