CONWAY — The Conway Symphony Orchestra will perform the Carnival of the Animals at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Donald W. Reynolds Performance Hall at University of Central Arkansas. Best-selling children's author Trenton Lee Stewart of Little Rock will narrate, with piano soloists John Krebs and Norman Boehm, both music professors at Hendrix College. The children's concert will also feature Tubby the Tuba, with soloist Christian Carichner, visiting assistant professor at UCA.
Tickets are available at the Reynolds Box Office, by phone at (501)450-3265 or toll free at (866) 810-0012, and at the Web site www.uca.edu/tickets. All tickets are $5 and will be open seating.
Stewart, author of The Mysterious Benedict Society, will be available to sign books following the concert. He recently was awarded the 24th annual Porter Fund Library Prize for his children's novels and adult short fiction by the Central Arkansas Library System and the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.
Children's activities will beoffered immediately following the one-hour performance, including refreshments and an "instrument petting zoo," inviting children to touch and play the instruments. In partnership with the Humane Society of Faulkner County, audience members can also meet animals of the cute, furry variety outside of Reynolds.
Carnival of the Animals will introduce short musical selections, each one representing a different animal, from lions and elephants to kangaroos and swans, with fish scales and piano scales, crazy cuckoos and dancing skeletons.
"The greatest lesson of Carnival of the Animals is that music is to be enjoyed," said CSO Conductor/Music Director Israel Getzov. "It's great family concert fare."
