After Nov. 19, West Virginia University President Gordon Gee can add WVU Symphony Orchestra conductor to his lengthy resume.

Gee will lead the orchestra’s performance of Professor James ‘Doc’ Miltenberger’s arrangement of “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” orchestrated for the WVU Symphony Orchestra by doctoral music composition student and WVU Symphony Orchestra cellist Christopher Jones.

The program, which begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Creative Arts Center, will also include Symphonic Ballade “Voyevoda” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, selections from “Peer Gynt” by Edvard Grieg and Symphony No. 5 by Jean Sibelius, all of which will be conducted by Director of Orchestral Activities Mitchell Arnold and graduate student Hanjin Sa.

“Even on a program of such exuberantly powerful music, performed by our outstanding students, the WVU conducting debut of President Gordon Gee stands out,” Arnold said.

“Knowing President Gee’s love and support for the arts as a part of the university’s mission, it is a distinct pleasure to have him at the CAC and to conduct on our concert. While ‘Country Roads’ and Dr. Gee’s conducting are only a part of an exciting concert by our talented students, this collaboration will definitely be a highlight of the year for everyone involved!” Arnold said.

“As I have said many times, an integral part of a college education is to glean all the experiences you can outside the classroom as well as inside it,” Gee said. “We work to ensure that every West Virginia University student has an appreciation of the arts, as well as the sciences,” said Gee, who studied piano, oboe and violin, and enjoyed listening to opera as a child in Vernal, Utah.

“I am looking forward to lifting the baton and having all those wonderful musicians follow my lead,” he said. “Now, if I can just count to four.”

Gee was on the College of Law faculty, soon to become the youngest-ever president of WVU, back in 1980 when John Denver performed the iconic song at the first game played at the new football stadium, then called Mountaineer Field.

“Country Roads” was already popular around the world by that time. Written in 1970 by Denver, Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert, it soon became one of Denver’s most popular songs and is still popular around the world today, especially in West Virginia. It was adopted as one of four official state songs by the West Virginia Legislature in 2014.

The song has been played by the Mountaineer Marching Band at every WVU home game since 1972 and in recent years it has been played following each Mountaineer football victory, with fans encouraged to remain in the stands and sing along with the team.

Also, this is not the first time that “Take Me Home, Country Roads” has been performed as a special event at WVU.

Miltenberger performed the song during the halftime show at the WVU-Texas Christian University football game in 2012. A Steinway grand piano was carried out onto the field for that occasion, which was to promote the WVU School of Music becoming an All-Steinway School.

Miltenberger, who has been on the music faculty for more than 50 years, wrote the arrangement of “Country Roads” that the WVU Marching Band plays today.

It is especially fitting that Miltenberger’s arrangement of the song will be the one conducted by President Gee.

Currently serving for a second time as president of WVU, Gee has been a higher education leader for more than three decades. In 2009, Time magazine named him one of the Top 10 university presidents in the United States.

In addition to his service at WVU, Gee served as president of The Ohio State University (twice), Vanderbilt University, Brown University and the University of Colorado. He graduated from the University of Utah with an honors degree in history and earned his J.D. and Ed.D. degrees from Columbia University.

Arnold completed a master’s degree in composition and a Doctor of Music degree in orchestral conducting at Northwestern University. He previously served on the faculties of Northern Illinois University as director of orchestras, and Northwestern University as assistant director of orchestras, as well as at Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory of Music and Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. He has an extensive background in new music and was a composing and performing member of the noted Chicago-based ensemble, Kapture, and one of the founding directors of New Music Chicago, a non-profit, new music advocacy organization. He has been invited to conduct the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra at the Clay Center for the Arts in Charleston, West Virginia, in 2013 and 2014.

The WVU Symphony Orchestra is recognized as one of the finest ensembles of its kind in the region. In 2013, the orchestra was awarded The American Prize Special Citation for Musical and Technical Excellence in a national competition, proving that it was one of the finer university orchestras in the country. That same year, the WVU Symphony Orchestra was one of only two collegiate orchestras in the United States invited to perform at the 2014 national conference of the College Orchestra Directors Association in Fort Worth, Texas. The invitation process included a blind review of submissions by a panel of judges.

Tickets for the Nov. 19 WVU Symphony Orchestra Concert are available by calling the WVU Box Office at 304-293-SHOW.

-WVU-

cl/11/06/14

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

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