Symphony performs free concert April 27

Los Lunas

The Symphony Orchestra of Albuquerque is celebrating spring with Valencia County.

On April 27, the orchestra will play Schumann’s “Spring Symphony” and Brahm’s “Academic Festival Overture.”

“We picked a spring symphony — it’s very, very fitting this time of year to make it sound like spring,” said Charles McDaniel, producer.

The Brahms piece “is very upbeat.”

Also added to the program is Bach’s Brandenberg Concerto No. 4 which is “very, very peppy.”

The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Los Lunas High School Auditorium. Admission is free.

The event is sponsored by the Los Lunas-Bosque Farms Chamber of Commerce and the Los Lunas Public Schools District.

Bill Swift is the conductor.

The Albuquerque Symphony has a youth and an adult choir and “brings music to 25,000 children in the school system,” McDaniel said.

The Los Lunas Chamber has brought the symphony to the county for at least eight years, said Diane Pope, executive director of the chamber.

The chamber sponsors the concert in Los Lunas “to offer the residents of Valencia County the opportunity to hear the symphony without going to Albuquerque,” she said.

There will be a silent auction to benefit the chamber, the symphony and the Los Lunas High School band. It will be held at the lobby of the auditorium at 6:30 p.m.

Concert tickets are available at the Chamber of Commerce in Los Lunas, at businesses and at the high school on the night of performance.

Swift worked in Europe and with adults and children, McDaniel said. He also has worked with the Albuquerque Philharmonic and the Symphony of Albuquerque and he has been a guest conductor. He is a retired band director for an Albuquerque high school.

McDaniel founded the Symphony of Albuquerque in 1997. He holds undergraduate degrees in history and English and has another major in music. Now, he is doing post-graduate studies in literature, music and theology.