Press Release #09-223 (St. Mary’s City, MD) — The St. Mary’s College Orchestra looks to the heavens and the American prairies for its music choices for a concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, November 15, 2009, in Montgomery Hall’s room 25 at St. Mary’s College of Maryland (SMCM). Conducted by music director Jeffrey Silberschlag, the free public concert will include British composer Gustav Holst’s The Planets, an orchestral suite inspired by Holst’s fascination with astrology; and Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid, which incorporates folk songs as it follows the life of the famous outlaw. For more information, call 240-895-4498 or visit www.smcm.edu.

Silberschlag also is music director and conductor of the popular summer River Concert Series and Alba (Italy) Music Festival. He is an internationally renowned trumpet soloist and conductor, having recorded with the London and Seattle symphonies; London, Warsaw, and Royal Liverpool philharmonics; and the Czech Radio Orchestra. Silberschlag has served on the faculty at St. Mary’s College of Maryland since 1988.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland, designated the Maryland state honors college in 1992, is ranked one of the best liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report and Kiplinger’s. The Princeton Review named it a “best value college” in its 2009 edition. Founded in 1840 as Maryland’s “monument school” commemorating the state’s first capital, SMCM is the state’s only public honors college, offering “an Ivy-level College with a public-school price tag” (Newsweek).

Some 2,000 students attend the college, which has the highest graduation rate for all Maryland public colleges and universities, and an SAT average for student admissions of 1252. The school’s waterfront campus along the St. Mary’s River in Southern Maryland is home to the 2007 National Intercollegiate Sailing Association Women’s, Sloop, and Team champions.