Posted by Mary Wimberley on 1999-09-28

Scott Speck, Alabama Symphony associate conductor and San Francisco Ballet conductor, will be guest conductor at Samford University Orchestra's fall concert Tuesday, Oct. 12. Free to the public, the concert by the 55-member orchestra will be at 7:30 p.m. in Wright Center Concert Hall.

The program will include Beethoven's Leonore Overture No. 3, the Polovetsian Dances from Borodin's opera, Prince Igor, and the third movement ("Funeral from Akhnaten") of Glass Pieces by American minimalist composer Philip Glass. The Samford performance will be the Birmingham area premiere of the Glass piece.

For four years, Speck was conductor of the Honolulu Symphony. He has led the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Houston, New Orleans, San Antonio, Louisville, Tampa, Rochester, Jacksonville and others, and has been principal guest conductor of the China Film Philharmonic in Beijing.

Speck is co-author of two of the world's best-selling books on classical music for a popular audience, Classical Music for Dummies and Opera for Dummies. While conductor of the Honolulu Symphony, he led the largest orchestra education program in the U.S., reaching more than 100,000 students each year. He is on the senior faculty of the American Symphony Orchestra League's National Conducting Workshops.

 

 
Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 5,791 students from 49 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.