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Symphony to memorialize ’66 Kansas tornado with stormy music

Photo Topeka Symphony
Photo Topeka Symphony

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Topeka Symphony Orchestra is performing stormy music to commemorate the upcoming 50th anniversary of a tornado that killed 16 people.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the performance is scheduled Saturday night at the White Concert Hall on the campus of Washburn University.

The symphony’s music director and conductor, Kyle Wiley Pickett, says he’s read accounts of the tornado that struck on June 6, 1966. The tornado was classified as an F-5 on the Fujita scale. It stayed on the ground for more than a half hour, cutting a half mile-wide swath.

Works from Ludwig van Beethoven and English composer Benjamin Britten will be performed in remembrance. Pickett says the selections “reminds us of the greatness of nature — its beauty as well as terrible power.”

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