
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 13, 1991                   TAG: 9104130207
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

POET, CHOIR JOIN RSO IN SUNDAY SERIES FINALE

The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra on Sunday will present a program uniting the orchestra, poet Nikki Giovanni and a gospel choir directed by Lavenia Smith.

The "Poetics of Music" concert will take place at 3 p.m. in the auditorium of Cave Spring High School.

With it, the orchestra's three-year-old Sunday With the Symphony series will come to a close. It is being discontinued as part of the orchestra's fiscal retrenchment in the face of lessened financial support from the state.

Nikki Giovanni teaches at Virginia Tech. She is an internationally known poet with more than 15 books to her credit, the most recent being "Sacred Cows . . . and Other Edibles" from 1988.

At the concert, she will read from her work to the accompaniment of the gospel choir. Among the poems she will read are "Mothers," "The Life I Led," "Great Pax Whitie" and "My House."

Under Smith's direction, the choir will perform "Amazing Grace," "Deep River," "Never Grow Old," "Banks of Jordan" and other spirituals. Victoria Bond, the orchestra's conductor, will accompany the choir on piano.

Smith is organist and pianist for the Deliverance Church of Christ in Roanoke.

For the symphonic side of Sunday's program, Bond will conduct the orchestra in the overture to Gioacchino Rossini's "Italian in Algiers" (1813) and the "Variaciones Concertantes" (1953) of Alberto Ginastera.

Tickets can be ordered through the orchestra box office (343-9127) or bought at the door.

Tickets are $10 and $12 for the concert. Students are admitted to both events for half price. For the concert, the discount applies to senior citizens as well.

by CNB