The Friends of Music announces Italian Adventure, the final concert of the Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra season, Saturday, March 9, at 8 p.m. in the Frank Arts Center.

Italian Adventure is Italian through and through, with a brilliant Italian guest conductor and featuring Italian works both great favorites, as well as some new contemporary works. The concert will bring Sicily, Naples and Rome straight to the Frank Center with Mendelssohn’s radiant and dashing Italian Symphony. Then it makes a quick hop across the Mediterranean for Rossini’s light-hearted Overture to L’italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers). Contemporary works of great beauty and charm by Teresa Procaccini and Italian American John Corigliano round out this program led by guest conductor Simeone Tartaglione.

Italian-born Tartaglione, a multi-talented conductor and pianist, has had extensive study and training in the European tradition of conducting, composition, opera and chamber music at institutions in Rome. He has conducted in Italy, Spain, Russia, Romania, Mexico and Ukraine, as well as in the United States. Dr. Tartaglione is an Adjunct Faculty member at the Peabody Institute Opera Department in Baltimore and is currently the Music Director of the Newark Symphony Orchestra in Delaware and the BE Symphony in Baltimore.

The Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra, (Jed Gaylin, music director), is a professional orchestra performing at the Frank Center on the campus of Shepherd University in Shepherdstown and has received wide critical acclaim since it?s founding by Friends of Music (FOM) in 2007 from the music faculty at Shepherd University and professional musicians from Baltimore, Washington and around the Eastern Panhandle area.

The Two Rivers Italian Adventure concert will begin at 8 p.m. and is sponsored by the Friends of Music Board of Directors. Tickets can be purchased at the door or by contacting the Friends of Music, Inc. at 304-876-5765 or at “http://www.sufom.org”>www.sufom.org. The ticket price is $27.

The public is cordially invited to “Lunch with Friends” at the Bavarian Inn, Shepherdstown on Friday, March 8. The Friends Guild hosts this event and special guest is guest conductor, Simeone Tartaglione, who will be giving a preview of his program. Lunch with Friends is open to the public, but reservations are required and can be made by calling Betty Lou Bryant at 304-876-3897. For concert ticket information, and to learn more about the Friends of Music, please call 304-876-5765 or visit www.sufom.org.