The Mendelssohn Performing Arts Center is pleased to kick off our Main Concert Series with our award-winning Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra and Music Director Stephen Squires open our season with Stained Glass Concerto! Featured flute soloist: Scott Metlicka. This program will include the piece Stained Glass Concerto by American composer Dexter Morrill – and we are pleased to tell you that Mr. Morrill himself will be in attendance! Program: Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite #3…….Ottorino Respighi Serenade, Op. 35 for Flute and Orchestra…….Howard Hanson Poem, A. 93 for Flute and Orchestra……….Charles Griffes Stained Glass Concerto for Piccolo and Orchestra…….Dexter Morrill 5 Variants on “Dives and Lazarus”…….R. Vaughan Williams Dexter Morrill is a renowned American composer, arranger, and jazz trumpeter. As a young musician he studied with Peter Fogg and Professor Irwin Shainman at Williams College. Professor Shainman then invited Mr. Morrill to perform in the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Morrill attended Colgate University, Lenox School of Jazz, Stanford and Cornell, studying with William Skelton, Leonard Ratner, Robert Palmer, William Russo, Leland Smith, and the great Dizzy Gillespie. He taught at Colgate University from 1969 to 2001 and built the innovative Computer Music Studio at Colgate in 1972. Since then, Mr. Morrill has devoted himself to composition and teaching in the field of computer music and the study and synthesis of brass tones. Later in the 80s, he worked with Wynton Marsalis on a proposed television project, which resulted in an interactive computer/trumpet design for the NEXT computer. Because of this work, Mr. Morrill returned to performance and composed several pieces for himself which involved improvisation. After 1990, Mr. Morrill returned to composing music for conventional instruments and ensembles, and was active in recording. He has composed works for Ruggiero Ricci, saxophonists Stan Getz and David Demsey, soprano Pamela Jordan, and bassist Lynn Seaton, among others. He composed “Stained Glass Concerto” for the Syracuse Symphony, and Stephen Squires, Music Director of the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra, conducted the world premiere of the work. Visit www.mendelssohnpac.org for more about the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra and Stephen Squires. Visit www.dextermorrill.com for more about composer Dexter Morrill. Funded in part through New Music USA’s MetLife Creative Connections program. This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. *All performers, programs, prices and venues subject to change.