The Midcoast Symphony Orchestra will perform the final concert series of this season under the baton of Conductor Rohan Smith, on Saturday and Sunday, May 10 and 11, 2014. This concert will mark the inaugural concert for the Symphony’s new side-by-side program, for which young music students have been invited to join the Midcoast Symphony to open the concert with Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture. The orchestra will also perform Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

The student musicians joining the orchestra come from all over Maine’s Midcoast: Bowdoin, Brunswick, Cumberland, Damariscotta, Grey, New Gloucester, Topsham, and Yarmouth. Instruments represented include violins, flute, clarinet, bassoon, percussion, French horn, trombone and tuba. In addition to being fine musicians, different students raise pigs and sheep, perform in competitive tap dancing, and are on athletic teams including ice hockey, volleyball, and track.

Symphony performances are Saturday, May 10, 2014, at 7:30 p.m. at the Franco American Heritage Center in Lewiston and Sunday, May 11, 2014, at 2:30 p.m. at the Orion Performing Arts Center in Topsham. Tickets are $ 20 and available online at http://www.midcoastsymphony.org/, also Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, Now You’re Cooking in Bath, or at the concert hall prior to the performance. For additional information or to purchase by phone, please call 846-5378. As always, students 18 and younger are admitted free.