Upcoming events

All concerts are at Festival Hall, Pembroke. Reserved seating.
Advance tickets: Adult $15 Student $8
At the door: Adult $17 Student $10
Children 12 and under FREE.

Tickets available at Festival Hall Box Office 613-735-2613

Help support the PSO while enjoying a wonderful evening at the PSO Black Tie Valentine's Gala on February 13, 2010.

Concert #2 -- Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 2 pm

Symphony Swings

Swing and Dixie Music
Special Guests: Yen-Yen Gee (Piano, Rhapsody in Blue) and the New Orleans Express

Music includes:

- Tributes to Louis Armstrong and Tommy Dorsey
- Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin featuring Yen-Yen Gee on piano
- A set by the New Orleans Express
- Combined set with arrangements by Angus Armstrong and Gordie Tapp, featuring such favourites as: St. Louis Blues and Some of These Days.

Yen-Yen Gee was born in Manitoba and began studying piano at the age of four. In June 2009, she completed a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance with Andrew Tunis. She is currently a student of David Jalbert, in her first year of studies towards a Master’s in Music. Among her accomplishments, she was winner of the 2005 Ontario Registered Music Teachers Association's Young Artist Competition and 2007 University of Ottawa Concerto Competition. She has performed in recital as a solo and chamber musician in Québec, Ontario, Manitoba, and B.C. As a soloist, she has worked with the Ottawa Chamber Orchestra, the University of Ottawa Orchestra, and the Parkdale Orchestra.

New Orleans Express was founded by Ron Lloyd in 1999 and currently comprises: Ron Lloyd on banjo, Gordie Tapp on cornet, Ted Clifford on clarinet and soprano saxophone, Dale Hopkins on tenor saxophone, Mike Britton on trombone, Glenda O’Brien on piano, Chuck Pierce on double bass, and Roy Yandt on drums and washboard. Gordie Tapp also arranges a lot of the music.

Most of their music spans from 1900 to 1935 and can aptly be called classic jazz. NEW ORLEANS EXPRESS has played in pubs, clubs, restaurants, festivals, waterfront concerts and cruises and is gaining more and more fans in the Ottawa Valley and beyond. They have a CD to their credit and are currently working on their second. Most of all the band sets out to play happy, foot-tapping, hot jazz that is melodious, rhythmical and different from the run-of-the-mill Dixieland repertoire.

Concert #3 -- Sunday, April 18th, 2010 at 2 pm

Harmonious Horns

Flotow: Alessandra Stradella Overture
F.J. Haydn - Concerto #2 for French Horn (now attributed to Rosetti)
M. Haydn Concerto in D for Horn
M. Haydn Concertino for Horn and Alto Trombone

Soloists: Renée Allen, Natural Horn and Angus Armstrong, trombone

Renee Allen

RRenée Allen graduated from McGill University and played in l'Orchestres des Jeunes du Québec, and the Québec Symphony Orchestra before going to Germany to study natural horn with Hermann Baumann in 1981. She played several years in the German opera orchestras of Mainz and Stuttgart before devoting herself to the natural horn and the F.M. Alexander Technique. She has taught natural horn at the conservatories of Leipzig and Freiburg and has been teaching the Alexander Technique since 1993.

She plays regularly with Concerto Köln, and can be heard on many recordings with this ensemble as well as with other period orchestras; of note, is the Heinichen Concerti recording with Musica Antiqua Köln and Rheinhard Goebel.

She currently plays with ensembles such as Anima Eterna (Jos van Immerseel), Concerto Copenhagen (lars Ulrich Mortesen), Hannover Hofkapelle (Jörg Straube), Balthasar Neumann Ensemble (Thomas Henglebrock), La Petite Bande (Sigiswald Kuijken) and Opéra Fuoco (David Stern). The Alexander Technique continues to play an important role in her teaching and performing. Renée Allen recently presented her research on historical methods at the international Conference for Alexander Teachers working with musicians at the Guildhall School in London, England.

Concert #1 -- Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 2pm

Back to Basics

Overture: Rossini “La gazza ladra”
Concerto: Mozart Clarinet Concerto
Symphony: Haydn #104

Soloist: Shauna McDonald

Shauna McDonald joined the Ottawa Symphony as principal clarinetist in September 2008. She also recently joined the clarinet faculty at the University of Ottawa, and performs frequently in the National Arts Centre Orchestra.

Shauna began her clarinet study with Stephen Robb in Vancouver, B.C. Her first orchestral experience was with the Delta Youth Orchestra, with whom she performed the Johann Stamitz Concerto at age 16. She subsequently played and toured with the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra until she graduated high school. Shauna then moved to Montreal to study clarinet at McGill University with Robert Crowley. After finishing her degree in performance, Shauna was offered a full scholarship to pursue a Master’s in Performance with Larry Combs at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. While there, Shauna won the principal clarinet chair in the DePaul Symphony Orchestra. She also performed and recorded with DePaul’s top chamber music group for both years. DePaul conferred on Shauna the degree of Master of Music Performance, with honors, in 2008.

In the last few years, Shauna has played with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada and L’Orchestre de la Francophonie. Shauna has collaborated with conductors Yoav Talmi, Bramwell Tovey and Paul Nadler and has performed throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe. She can be heard on CBC broadcasts with the NYO, OFC and the McGill Contemporary Ensemble.