Melanie Young

Manassas Symphony Orchestra

New Orleans legend and worldwide sensation Doreen Ketchens brings her inimitable style back to Manassas, once again accompanied by the full orchestra. This time, Doreen is swinging Merchant Hall with holiday classics in her exclusive Dixieland style. Don’t miss this unforgettable start to the holiday season!

Holiday in New Orleans

Hylton Performing Arts Center

For this all-American program, the MSO features its principal harpist, Melanie Young, in a performance of Ennanga by William Grant Still.

This rarely heard work for harp, strings, and piano is a vivid reflection of the ennanga, an African harp-like instrument. Played on a modern harp, the piece has a calming, restorative quality that gently soothes the soul.

Sonic America

First appearing with the MSO in 2011, violin virtuoso Andrew Sords returns to Merchant Hall for his third performance, this time showcasing Richard Strauss’s vibrant and youthful Violin Concerto in D Minor. Composed when Strauss was only 17, the concerto may be less frequently performed than his later tone poems and operas, but it remains a captivating showcase of late-Romantic virtuosity and artistic promise.

The concert opens with Leopold Stokowski’s dramatic orchestral arrangement of J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, made famous by Disney’s Fantasia. Inspired by a walking tour through the ruins of Holyrood Chapel in Edinburgh, Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 in A Minor (“Scottish”) brings the program — and the MSO’s season — to an exuberant close.