By GRACE CURRIE
Ad Astra Music Festival

RUSSELL –  Join the excitement of the Ad Astra Music Festival for their fifth summer of collaborative concerts and celebration of community. Tickets go on sale Friday, June 15 for the 2018 season, when musicians from all over the country join local musicians to present ten unique performances. The festival spans three weekends in July and includes both main stage and chamber music performances as well as the festival’s new Sunday Evening Series.

The four main stage performances are large-scale events featuring many world-class performers, suitable for large audiences. Tickets to each event are $10.

The main stage concerts include Brahms’ Requiem, performed by the joined forces of the Russell Community Choir, Ad Astra High School Honor Choir, and the Ad Astra Chamber Choir, Jazz at the Barn, featuring Russell native and Ft. Hays State University trumpet and jazz professor, Brad Dawson and his crew of jazz musicians in an intimate, outdoor setting, Semiconciousness, which explores music composed within the last decade that illuminates our hopes, fears, and unspoken ideas, and the dramatic and beloved Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.

Additionally, the festival’s three chamber music performances in the Deines Cultural Center place audiences intimately close to smaller casts of performers. Limited seating available. Tickets to each event are $10.

Kate Soper’s 2014 opera, Here be Sirens, The Elements, a recital featuring the 2018 Young Artists singing the music of Franz Schubert and Matthew Piatt about Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water, and Cannonballs Fly, an evening filled with musical responses to war and peace, featuring the Ad Astra String Quartet, mezzo-soprano Katelyn Mattson-Levy, tenor Michael Davidson, and pianist Matthew Piatt. The public can save $20 by buying season tickets to the seven ticketed events for only $50. Tickets will be available at the Russell Economic Development Office, Espresso Etc., and on the festival’s website: www.adastramusicfestival.org.

This year, the festival is also collaborating with local churches to offer sacred music during the festival’s new Sunday Evening Series. Three performances bring the historical music of the church home to Russell and provides an opportunity for people of all denominations to join together for these meditative events. Each performance begins at 7:00 p.m. and is free and open to the public.