The December 4th Symphony Orchestra concert features oboe soloist Robin Driscoll in Tison Street’s Adagio in E flat for oboe and orchestra along with a world premiere composition by Andrew Head. Driscoll is a member of the private instruction faculty for the Department of Music and Head is a senior Music and Computer Engineering double major.
Andrew Head has composed music for obscure computer games including Queer Catboy Love Triangle Disaster!! and King’s Ascent, both of which can be played online. He has performed original “synth pop” at the University of Pittsburgh Electronic Musicians’ ElectroShowdown 5. He studies music and computer engineering as an undergraduate at Pitt and will graduate later this month. Head’s new work, Overture to Grendel musically tells the story of Grendel, a hideously hairy beast and the arch-nemesis of the English epic Beowulf. Grendel is misunderstood – while vicious and frustrated, he is surprisingly tender at heart.
Robin Driscoll grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina and attended the North Carolina School of the Arts for High School. Driscoll later moved to Ohio where he studied oboe and mathematics at Oberlin College, Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Driscoll has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and Atlanta Symphony. He is currently principal oboe with the Pittsburgh Opera, the Pittsburgh Ballet and the Wheeling Symphony. The prestigious Pittsburgh Concert Society announced Driscoll as a winner of their 2008 competition. Driscoll is currently professor of Oboe at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and an instructor at Pitt. Not content to simply be a fine oboist, he has received a US Patent on a new machine for making oboe reeds and manufactures these machines at his own workshop in Washington, PA with the aid of new computerized milling technologies.
Come out to Bellefield Hall Auditorium and hear music from both these exciting artists on Wednesday night! The concert takes place at 8 p.m. and is free to the public.