2006-2007 will be the Red Mountain Chamber Orchestra"s 27th season of classical music concerts in Birmingham. Opening with our annual program in the sanctuary at Bluff Park Methodist Church in mid October, we will present the orchestra, conducted by Robert Wright, in an Overture ?in the Italian Style? by Schubert and Haydn?s ?Military? Symphony. Following intermission, we will add the choirs from the University of Montevallo and John Carroll High School in a performance of Haydn?s ?Te Deum?. This will be a special event for us because Robert Wright conducts the choir at Montevallo and his son Lee Wright has the choirs at John Carroll.

Our November concert last season of Mozart"s Requiem in honor of our patron-saint, Oliver Roosevelt, was a special landmark in the orchestra?s history. This year, though, we will move to a new area of town with a performance at South Highland"s Presbyterian Church. Our very successful Summer Solstice Concert at the Birmingham Museum of Art last June was conducted by Yurii Henriques who had just recently moved into town to be band director at Briarwood High School. This November, we will present a similar concert of instrumental concertos at the Presbyterian Church under his direction. The Red Mountain Wind ensemble will again contribute a quintet.

For over ten years, this orchestra has been privileged to have had Dr Tom Gibbs as one of our annual conductors. His musicality and passionate pursuit of the essence of the music has led the orchestra to play so often beyond its very best. There have been many memorable concerts along the way: Virginia Goodall singing Elgar?s Sea Pictures, Beethoven?s Calm Seas and Prosperous Voyage, Purcell?s Faerie Queene excerpts, Tchaikovsky?s Piano Concerto in B-flat minor with Ken Watson as soloist, etc. More recently, since 2000, at Birmingham Southern College we have collaborated with Dr Gibbs to feature the music department?s winners of the Dorsey Whittington Concerto/Aria Competition. Dr Gibbs will be leaving the college at the end of this school year. Our concert there in February will be a celebration of the years we?ve spent together. We wish him the best for his future and hope that he will return to work with the orchestra again.

Continuing to move into new areas of town, our spring concert will be held at Avondale Methodist Church. In 2004, Michael Fernandez, principal violist with the ASO, soloed with us in two marvelous, unknown English viola concertos. He will return this year with violinist Miroslava Ivanchenko-Bartels, associate concertmaster of the ASO, to present a duo-concerto program. Andrew Zabinski will come in from Tennessee to conduct this exciting concert.

We will close out the season with our traditional concerts for chamber players at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens and the Birmingham Museum of Art.

And, as always, because all our musicians (instrumentalists, conductors and soloists) and staff donate their time, skills and talents, and since Birmingham Southern College generously provides us with a home base, we are able to bring live classical music to your neighborhood, but there are still costs for rental/purchases of music and for publicity. We have no corporate sponsors. There are no logos or ads in our programs or commercials to sit thru. We exist simply to make music, and are able to do so financially by your generosity alone. Consequently, we would certainly appreciate any contribution you might be able to make. You may mail a check to:

Red Mountain Chamber Orchestra
c/o Suzanne Beaudry
868 6th Street West
Birmingham, AL 35204

or bring it with you to a concert and drop it in our donations basket.

Once again, we thank you for your patronage and hope to see you at many of our events. Be sure to check our web site (rmco.org) periodically for directions to concerts, photos, information about conductors and soloists and links to related sites. Please note that concert times will vary throughout the season.