Barber and Beethoven ...

The Rogue Valley Symphony will launch its 2007 season with a guest appearance by award-winning violinist Ian Swensen. Swensen will join the orchestra in a performance of Samuel Barber's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. As is always the case with Rogue Valley Symphony concerts, audiences in the Rogue Valley will have three choices of venue. The first performance will be at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 26, at the Southern Oregon University Music Recital Hall, 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland. The second will be at 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 27, at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater, 23 S. Central Ave., Medford. And the final performance will begin at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 28, at the Grants Pass High School Performing Arts Center, 830 N.E. Ninth St., Grants Pass. The concert will open with Richard Strauss' "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks." The piece is one of six tone poems composed in 1894-95 and emphasizes colorful orchestration, off-beat entrances and complex rhythms.

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