Press Release
March 31 2009
Celebrating Handel: 250 Years After His Death
San Diego Chamber Orchestra with Renowned Organist Carol Williams

The San Diego Chamber Orchestra will perform a concert devoted entirely to Handel's compositions on April 6, 7 and 17 at three San Diego area venues. Loved by generation after generation of classical music devotees, Handel's music has only grown more popular since his death 250 years ago, and this concert promises to be one of the favorites of the season.

The Orchestra will be joined for Handel's Organ Concerto by Carol Williams, an internationally renowned organist who became the first female civic organist appointed in the United States when she was appointed to the position of San Diego Civic Organist and Artistic Director of the Spreckels Organ Society at The Spreckels Organ in Balboa Park .

Carol began playing the piano at the age of five in England , "but then my aunt bought an organ, and that was it," she says. "I grew up playing jazz organ, and then studied organ at the Royal Academy of Music in London ." She moved to the United States , serving as the Yale University Chapel Organist and later completed work for her D.M.A. degree at the Manhattan School of Music. She has performed throughout the world, including a performance at the Forbidden City Concert Hall with the Beijing Symphony Orchestra.

Greg Maldonaldo, founder and Music Director of the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, a critically claimed organization, will be the guest conductor for these concerts. His orchestra has been featured on NPR and has performed at festivals throughout the United States and Europe . A native Californian, he recently completed a Doctorate degree in Early Music and Musicology at USC.

Selections from Handel's Water Music and Music for Royal Fireworks will also be performed, in addition to his Overture and Entrance of the Queen of Sheba from the opera Solomon and Concerto Grosso, opus 3, no. 2.

The San Diego Chamber Orchestra has had a phenomenally successful season, with sold-out concerts at every concert at St. Paul 's Cathedral Downtown and sold-out or nearly sold-out concerts in La Jolla . Tickets sales have grown by 22% over the past two seasons and there is a great deal of excitement about the total concert "experience," led by Artistic Director and Conductor Jung-Ho Pak, with the 30+ highly acclaimed musicians who have developed a real connection with audience members.

The Handel concerts will be performed at:

Sherwood Auditorium, La Jolla , Monday, April 6, 7:30 p.m.

Del Mar Country Club, Rancho Santa Fe, April 7, 7:30 p.m. (wine and hors d'oeuvres at 6:30 p.m.)

St. Paul 's Cathedral, Downtown, Friday, April 17, 7:30 p.m.