Exeter, NH (November 25, 2008)—On Friday, December 5, 7:00 p.m., Phillips Exeter Academy’s Music department will host its Annual Holiday Concert with over 200 students and more than nine major ensembles inside Thompson Gymnasium, located at Court and Gilman Streets in Exeter. The event is free and open to the public.

The West African Drumming Ensemble will perform Babatunde Olatunji’s Fanga, a traditional Liberian song of welcome, and will join the PEA Glee Club in an African processional, Jambo rafiki yangu, led by instructors Randy Armstrong and Ryan Turner; Symphonia, conducted by instructor Jae Hyeok Jang, will perform Fantasia on Greensleeves, by R. Vaughan Williams, among others; Concert Band, conducted by instructor Timothy Miles, will perform Ralph Hultgren’s, Beyond the Frontier and Alfred Reed’s Russian Christmas Music; Women’s Chorus will perform To the Sky, arranged by Carl Strommen, Bitter for Sweet, by Stephen Chatman, and Salmo 150, by Ernani Aguiar, conducted by instructors Jenny Cooper, Turner, and Radmila Repczynski on piano; Concert Choir, also conducted by Turner and Repczynski, will perform Dziedot dzimu, dziedot augu, a Latvian folk song, and Giancarlo Aquilanti’s Ave Maria, among others; Beethoven’s Holiday Joy, will be performed by the Stage Band, directed by instructor Charlie Jennison; the Chamber Orchestra, conducted by instructor Rohan Smith, will perform Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 in D, K. 297 “Paris,” and Bach’s Chorale Prelude “Wachet auf, Ruft uns Die Stimme”; the Glee Club and Chamber Orchestra, also conducted by Turner, will perform six movements of Francesco Durante’s Magnificat, featuring 10 solo student performances; and the Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Smith, will perform Beethoven’s Overture to “Egmont,” and Gioachino Rossini’s Overture to the opera William Tell. The concert’s finale includes an audience sing-along of such holiday favorites as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Silver Bells and Frosty the Snowman.

For further information, please call Patrice Baker in the music department at (603) 777-3453, or visit its webpage for a complete list of upcoming musical events. You may also call the PEA public events line at (603) 777-4309, or visit the PEA website. Directions to the Academy are available at (603) 777-4330.