Baroque Splendor

Handel’s sparkling Entrance of the Queen of Sheba opens this concert with a dazzling display of energy. Celebrated organist and Syracuse University organ professor Anne Laver is featured in a concerto on St. Paul’s organ. The concert concludes with Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, featuring its celebrated Air on the G String, lively dances, and jubilant finale.

Program:
- Handel: Solomon, HWV 67: Entrance of the Queen of Sheba
- TBD: Concerto for Organ
- Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068

Featured artists:

Alyssa Wang | conductor

Alyssa Wang is a passionate and versatile conductor, violinist, and composer. A recipient of the 2024 New Music USA Creator Fund, the 2023 Solti Foundation Career Assistance Award, and the 2022 St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award, Alyssa has explored diverse creative paths with a focus on audience inclusivity and engagement. She is the Co-Founder, Artistic Director, and Principal Conductor of the Boston Festival Orchestra, which presents an annual summer festival, chamber music series, and music education program. After serving as Assistant Conductor for Boston Ballet for four years, she will start the 25/26 season as Music Director of the Cincinnati Ballet. She has also served as guest conductor with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Cape Symphony, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and more.

As a violinist, Alyssa has soloed with ensembles across the country and is a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society. She has been featured in contemporary recordings, including Carlos Simon’s Grammy-nominated album Requiem for the Enslaved (Decca), Nancy Galbraith’s Violin Concerto with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and David Post’s Violin Sonata (Centaur).

As a composer, she premiered her violin concerto, Swept Away, with the Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh, which commissioned the work, in February 2023. She is currently working with Boston Ballet dancer Daniel Rubin on a duet for violin and dancer, and plans to premiere a String Octet for Boston Chamber Music Society in spring 2026.

Alyssa earned her bachelor’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University, studying with Andrés Cárdenes, and a master’s degree at the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Malcolm Lowe. She is a recipient of the Pittsburgh Female College Association Prize, the Carnegie Mellon Women’s Award, the Senior Leadership Award, and the Presser Undergraduate Scholar Award. Alyssa is also an Andrew Carnegie Scholar.

Anne Laver | organ

Described by Fanfare magazine as a “complete musician, totally adept and utterly stylish in everything she plays,” Anne Laver maintains an active career as a concert organist, scholar, and pedagogue. She has performed in Europe, Scandinavia, Latin America, Africa, and across the United States, and has been a featured recitalist at conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Organ Historical Society, the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, and the Göteborg International Organ Academy in Sweden. In 2010, she received second prize in the AGO National Young Artist Competition in Organ Performance. Her debut recording, Reflections of Light (Loft, 2019), received favorable reviews and has aired on nationally syndicated radio programs, including WXXI FM’s With Heart and Voice and American Public Media’s Pipedreams. She will release a new album of solo and chamber music for organ by composer Natalie Draper on the Acis label in early 2026.

Anne is equally at home on antique and modern organs. Her programs are tailored to each instrument and explore themes ranging from seventeenth-century German variation to music by women composers and organ music with live dance. An advocate for new music and a more diverse organ repertoire, she has worked with composer Natalie Draper on programs for composers writing for organ and has premiered works by Draper, Jessica Meyer, Eric Heumann, Jordan Alexander Key, and Ivan Božičević.

Anne is Associate Professor of Organ and University Organist at Syracuse University’s Setnor School of Music, where she helps educate future organists and church musicians. She is also artistic director of the Malmgren Concert Series at Hendricks Chapel, coordinates the annual Arthur Poister Competition in Organ Playing, and hosts youth education programs with local chapters of the American Guild of Organists. She has taught and led outreach programs at the Eastman School of Music, most recently as Visiting Professor of Organ from 2020 to 2022. She has also chaired national committees for the American Guild of Organists, the Organ Historical Society, and the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboards.

As a scholar, Anne researches organ music at nineteenth- and twentieth-century world’s fairs. Her articles have appeared in the Journal for the Society of American Music, Keyboard Perspectives, The American Organist, and Vox Humana. She is collaborating with filmmaker Will Fraser, founder of Fugue State Films, on a documentary celebrating organ culture in the United States.

Anne began piano studies with Jacqueline Cratin Smith before focusing on organ as an undergraduate student of Mark Steinbach at Brown University. She continued her studies at the Conservatory of Amsterdam with Jacques van Oortmerssen and completed master’s and doctoral degrees in organ performance with Hans Davidsson at the Eastman School of Music.