Diablo Symphony Family Concert: “Joy of the Symphony” with Josh Kornbluth

Description

The Diablo Symphony’s annual family concert will be held on March 29 at 2:00 p.m. at the Lesher Center for the Arts. Titled “Joy of the Symphony,” the concert showcases the instruments of the orchestra in Benjamin Britten’s virtuosic “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” narrated by local storyteller Josh Kornbluth. Based on a theme by Baroque composer Henry Purcell, this brilliant introduction to orchestral instruments highlights the woodwind, brass, string, and percussion families individually before uniting them in a final fugue. The joy of music is also highlighted in John Williams’s “Star Wars, Main Theme.” The program also features the DSO’s 2026 Yen Liang Young Artist Competition winner, Ellie Xuan, in the first movement of Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto. Xuan is a seventh-grade student at Gale Ranch Middle School in San Ramon. She studies piano with Dr. Chia-Lin Yang in the precollege division at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Kornbluth is known for his one-man shows that humorously draw a connection between his own personal foibles and larger societal issues. His concert film The Mathematics of Change tells the uproarious story of a young mathematician who unexpectedly discovers his limitations as a Princeton University freshman (Kornbluth himself left Princeton before graduating). He also hosted an interview show on public TV station KQED for two years.