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Emily Bear Continued from Cover
“This is the grand finale to our season, so it will be a very festive, celebratory event,” says Michele McAffee, RSO marketing director. “All of the pieces are challenging to play, and Tchaikovsky’s piece is especially stirring and significant. We usually have the biggest orchestra of the year for our final Classics concert.” Bear adds to the excitement as the night’s guest musician. Born and raised in Rockford, she has been composing since age 3 and performing since age 5. Bear has played in prestigious concerts around the world, including at the White House, Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. She became the youngest recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award when she was 6 years old. She put out her first studio album, produced by her mentor Quincy
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Smart Living Weekly
Jones, in 2013, and continues to win awards for her composing. Bear’s original composition, “Les Voyages,” will be the third piece of the concert. It debuted in 2014 when she was 12 years old and made her one of the youngest recipients of the 2016 ASCAP Foundation Young Concert Music Composer of the Year Award. Written for a full concert orchestra, “Les Voyages” draws inspiration from Homer’s “Odyssey” by touching on many steps of Homer’s 10-year voyage home. “Emily’s a very versatile musician,” McAffee says. “A lot of the recent writing and touring that she does is in the jazz genre, so it’s an exception for Emily to go
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back to her roots and do a symphonic performance. There are only a few national orchestras she’s performed with, and the Rockford Symphony is honored to be one of them.” This will be Bear’s third official concert with the orchestra, after performing at age 7 in 2009 and again at age 11 in