With special baroque artists Christopher Krueger, Marc Schachman, Linda Quan, Myron Lutzke, Arthur Haas, RJ Kelley, John Thiessen, Andrew Schwartz and Teresa Wakim

     This finale to the Junior Baroque Music Festival’s weekend immersion in the Baroque is our second performance in the beautiful State Theatre and promises to be a spectacular production of son e lumière fitting to Handel and Pergolesi, the opera masters of the 18th century.  A “Band of Seventy Musicians are to play the Musick wch is compos’d by M.r  Handel,”  the “Royal Fireworks Suite” of 1749, hastily assembled by M.r Handel to celebrate King George’s War and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.  There will be visual fireworks and sonic triumphs.  Also on the program is Handel’s Suite No. 7 in g minor, the movements played by various pianists in baroque style.  Because the concert falls in Holy Week, young singers and instrumentalists will perform duets from Pergolesi’s wrenchingly emotional “Stabat Mater” to a backdrop of La Pietà.  Between these masterworks, selected soloists perform baroque pieces worked on in the Saturday master classes.  The guest artists of international early music fame have directed the master classes and will perform alongside the young musicians in the masterworks.