Photo provided
Anthony Nunziat
 

The 18th Season of the Endless Mountain Music Festival will end with three EMMF Orchestra concerts, this Friday, Aug. 2 in Steadman Theatre at Commonwealth University in Mansfield, and this Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 3 and 4 at the Corning Museum of Glass Auditorium in Corning, N.Y.
 
BOGO tickets – buy one ticket and get one free – will be sold at the door Friday and Saturday nights, Aug. 2 and 3. 
 
Youth, 20 and under, are admitted free to all festival concerts.
 
At 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 2 in Steadman Theater, the EMMF Orchestra conducted by Stephen Gunzenhauser will kick off the closing weekend with a performance of classic works, including “Festive Overture, Opus 96” written by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1954 and “Symphony No. 5 in B-Flat Major” composed by Franz Schubert in 1816 along with “Pentangle: Five Songs for French Horn and Orchestra” written by Peter Schickele probably in the 1970s and featuring Robert Danforth on French Horn. 
 
Since its premiere in November 1954, “Festive Overture” has become one of Shostakovich’s most oft-performed works. In fact, its opening brass fanfare was chosen as the iconic musical theme for the Summer Olympics in Moscow in 1980. Today, Shostakovich is considered the Soviet Union’s greatest composer of classical music. 
 
Schubert’s “Symphony No. 5” best exemplifies  ‘The Way Things Were,” the motto of this Friday’s concert. Schubert glances backwards to Haydn and Mozart in shaping the first movement as a transparent sonata form full of joyful melodies presented in symphonic garb.
 
A surprise awaits the “Pentangle” listener. Expect the unusual.
 
“Franckly Speaking,” the Festival’s final evening performance on Saturday, Aug. 3 at 7 p.m. at the Corning Museum of Glass Auditorium will feature some of the most dramatic orchestral works in the classical canon, such as César Franck’s “Symphony in D Minor” composed in 1889.
 
Performing Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor” will be pianist Andrew Li.
 
During “Its Showtime,” the FREE Corning Pops Concert at 2:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon, Aug. 4 at the Corning Museum of Glass Auditorium, Anthony Nunziata and the EMMF Orchestra under Gunzenhauser’s baton will perform  popular songs from the Great American Songbook.
 
“I’m in the business of making people feel good, making people happy, moving people in some way,” Nunziata said. “We all are on this life’s journey in search of that feeling of being moved, to feel alive. If I can have a small part in moving you in some way during my live concerts or through my music, this is the greatest gift I can give. To make people laugh, cry, feel something — there’s nothing like it.”
 
Nunziata is the New York City-based, internationally-acclaimed singer and songwriter who brings his soulful voice to classic jazz, pop standards and his original music. 
 
He has performed more than 400 concerts over the past few years headlining major performing arts centers, theaters, symphony concert halls and private events across the country and around the world. The Brooklyn-born, classically trained singer is hailed by Broadwayworld as “an explosion of love and entertainment.” Nunziata co-headlined Carnegie Hall for two sold-out concerts with the New York Pops Symphony Orchestra.
 
For more information about the concerts, call the Endless Mountain Music Festival Box Office at 570-787-7800 or visit www.endlessmountain.net