Sixth Annual William H. Scheide Birthday Benefit Will Support Community Park Pool

WHS_JMS_photo_Kevin BirchMusician, philanthropist, and humanitarian William H. Scheide will celebrate his 99th birthday on Friday, January 18, by sponsoring “Forever Young”, a concert featuring classical music by Bax, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Britten, and others.

The sixth annual Scheide birthday concert and will benefit Princeton’s new Community Park Pool, which opened in 2012. This concert will feature the English Chamber Orchestra at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall.

“Last year, my birthday concert honored the Princeton Public Library, our community’s living room. This year, we will pay tribute to the Community Park Pool, our community’s summer playground,” Scheide said.

Conductor Mark Laycock will lead the orchestra. The program will include one of the most recent acquisitions for the Scheide Library, a rare first edition of the complete Op. 8, which contains all performance parts to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. As a special birthday gift, the English Chamber Orchestra will perform Winter, including the not often heard cello obbligato part without conductor as was the practice when this edition was printed.

The concert will also feature Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, and pieces from an album recently acquired by Judith Scheide as a gift to her husband. This album is a collection of Variations on Happy Birthday assembled by American composer Samuel Barber, who, in 1951, wrote to the most prominent composers of the day and asked them to create greetings for Mary Curtis Bok Zimbalist’s 75th birthday, which he then compiled, bound, and presented to the founder and patroness of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

“This collection is remarkable in that none of these musical variations has ever been published, providing our audience the opportunity to hear previously unknown works by such composers as Arnold Bax, Ernst Bloch, Aaron Copland, Ralph Vaughn Williams, and many others” said Laycock.

Scheide’s annual birthday concerts have  benefitted Isles, Inc., Centurion Ministries, The Arts Council of Princeton, Princeton Healthcare System Foundation, and the Princeton Public Library.

“We are so thrilled to have been selected as this year’s beneficiary and look forward to celebrating Bill Scheide’s birthday with him,” said Ben Stentz, executive director of the Princeton Recreation Department. “We look forward to seeing everyone at the concert.”

For more information about the concert, visit www.scheideconcerts.com or call Princeton University Ticketing at 609-258- 9220. General admission tickets are $35. Sponsorship opportunities are also available (contact Jamie Sapoch at jksapoch@gmail.com).

English Chamber Orchestra

Photos: Bill and Judy Scheide, photo credit Kevin Birch
“Forever Young” Poster. The English Chamber Orchestra Birthday Concert, 2012