La Salle-Peru High graduate will be featured in IVSO’s ‘Belated Beethoven Bash’

The Illinois Valley Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Music Director and Conductor Daniel Sommerville, will present “Belated Beethoven Bash!” at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 30, at the La Salle-Peru High School’s Matthiessen Auditorium, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig Van Beethoven.

La Salle-Peru High School graduate and Peru native Sherry Rubins will be featured soloist in Darius Milhaud’s colorful “Concerto for Marimba and Vibraphone, op. 278.” The program will also include Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 1,” Franz Schubert’s “Rosamunde Overture,” and “The Moldau” by Bedrich Smetana.

Tickets are available online at ivso.org and also at the door. Adults tickets are $20, tickets for college students with ID are $5, and students kindergarten through 12th grades are free. Matthiessen Memorial Auditorium is accessible to all. If you have any questions, email accessibility@ivso.org. The IVSO will fully align with all CDC, state and La Salle County health mandates and recommendations.

Sherry Rubins is professor of practice and coordinator of the percussion program at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Rubins directs the percussion and steel drum ensembles and teaches undergraduate and graduate percussion majors. Rubins is principal timpanist with the Mid-Texas Symphony, the Victoria Bach Festival and the Mozart Festival Texas (San Antonio). Recently, she held the position of acting principal timpanist and acting assistant principal timpanist/percussionist with the San Antonio Symphony. She frequently performs as a substitute musician with the San Antonio Symphony.

As a busy freelance percussionist, she has contracted and played for numerous touring shows including A Tribute to Prince, Weird Al and Hugh Jackman. She has presented clinics and performances throughout the south Texas area, the Texas Music Educators Association, the Texas Bandmasters Association Convention, the Music for All National Percussion Symposium in Indianapolis, the Midwest Band and Orchestra clinic, and the Percussive Arts Society International Convention.

Rubins is an artist/educational clinician for the Zildjian/Vic Firth Company, Remo Percussion and the Yamaha Corporation. She has been featured on the Zildjian, Texas Music Educators and Vic Firth websites. Rubins is an active long-time member of the Percussive Arts Society, where she recently finished her term on the board of advisors. In the past she also served as vice president of the Texas Chapter of PAS.

Rubins received her bachelor’s degree in music education at Western Illinois University. She began her graduate studies at Baylor University and finished her master’s degree in music performance at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She resides in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband Peter and their son Matthew.

The YM-5100 marimba and YV-3910 vibraphone on which Rubins will perform are provided on loan by the Yamaha Corporation of America with help from The Music Shoppe, located in Normal, Champaign and Springfield.

Rubins will present a percussion workshop Thursday, Oct. 28, at La Salle-Peru High School and afternoon assemblies at Parkside Middle School in Peru. Both school presentations are facilitated by the North Central Illinois Artworks as part of the nonprofit’s educational outreach initiative.

IVSO Season sponsor is Ottawa Radio: WCMY 1430AM and 95.3JackFM. The October concert is sponsored by Spring Valley City Bank and Eureka Savings Bank and supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.