Poetry ReadingV.A. SmithThursday, September 26, 7pm, Bucknell HallVA Smith's work has appeared or is forthcoming in several anthologies and in dozens of literary journals, among them Southern Review, Calyx, Crab Creek Review, West Trade Review and Quartet. A frequent Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, her first two books are Biking Through the Stone Age and American Daughters (Kelsay Books, 2022 and 2023). A former Liberal Arts Teaching Excellence awardee at Penn State University, and a Professor of Teaching in The Department of English, VA gigs now as a staff member at River Heron Review, writes, bikes, and home chefs. Learn more about Virginia's work at vasmithpoetry.com, or on Instagram and YouTube @vasmithpoetry.

It's one thing for four players in a string quartet to lean in to the group sound and react spontaneously, but with 20 to 30 musicians together, the complexities and payoffs are magnified exponentially. Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's catalog of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch and other labels has grown to include more than 70 albums that stand as benchmarks of the chamber orchestra repertoire, including Haydn symphonies, Mozart concertos and 20th-century gems by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Ravel and Bartók. Orpheus's performance will include Garrick Ohlsson, a trusted Mozart partner who has been hailed for his "muscular technique and the sensitivity and restraint with which he deploys it" by The New York Times, and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9 (Jeunehomme). While Mozart melded styles from near and far to redefine the concerto genre, Brahms mined Handel (and Bach and Beethoven) to craft what he later called his "favorite work," the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24, another piece to be performed. Composer and six-time Grammy-winner Billy Childs infuses classical traditions with his jazz roots in a new work for Orpheus.