M E D I A  A D V I S O R Y

Get ready for a spooky good time with Halloween Spooktacular
Saturday, October 31 – 11am
Richmond CenterStage’s Carpenter Theatre

October 16, 2015 – Richmond, Virginia Get in the spirit of the spooky season with a Halloween Spooktacular event on Saturday, October 31 at 11am. Show up in your favorite costume, pick up a Trick-or-Treat bag, and hear the Richmond Symphony perform music from Frozen, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and more during the first Union Bank & Trust LolliPops concert of the 2015-16 Season. The concert will be held at Richmond CenterStage’s Carpenter Theatre and led by guest conductor, Ankush Bahl.

Arrive early for a pre-concert festival beginning at 10am in Rhythm Hall. Festival activities include the popular instrument petting zoo, crafts provided by the Children’s Museum of Richmond, a Sound Science Lab provided by the Science Museum of Virginia and more. Special Trick-or-Treat bags will also be handed out after the performance. LolliPops concerts are ideal for children ages 5 and up, but music lovers of all ages are welcome.

Tickets are $12 for children and $17 for adults online at richmondsymphony.com or by calling
1.800.514 ETIX.

The LolliPops Series is sponsored by Union Bank & Trust.
About Ankush Kumar Bahl

Described by the New York Times as an “energetic” conductor who leads with “clear authority and enthusiasm,” Ankush Kumar Bahl has made in recent years appearances with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, Orchestre National de France in Paris, National Opera Orchestra of Nancy in Nancy, France, Copenhagen Philharmonic in Denmark, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, among others. This upcoming season, Bahl will debut with orchestras in Canada, Mexico and South America. Mr. Bahl is a proud recipient of 2011, 2013, and 2015 Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards as well as the 2009 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Scholarship. From 2011 through 2015, for four consecutive seasons, Bahl was the Assistant Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC.

He received high praise and critical acclaim after both his Carnegie Hall debut and his work during the 2009 Kurt Masur Conducting Seminar. Bahl also drew the attention of Kurt Masur who quickly offered him the opportunity to study and work with him as an assistant of the Orchestre National de France in Paris, Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig and the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam where he was called upon on short notice to step in for Maestro Masur and conduct the Orchestra in two performances in 2012.

During his tenure at the NSO, Bahl has conducted over 100 performances with the orchestra including his NSO debut in 2011, his subscription concert debut in 2012, his Wolf Trap debut in 2013, the inaugural concert of the Rubenstein Family organ for the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall in 2012, numerous run out concerts for the NSO’s In Your Neighborhood program, and his annual Young Peoples Concerts which educate over 24,000 students each year. In addition, Bahl was the primary conductor for the NSO’s Beyond the Score series and in February 2013, he stepped in for an ailing Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos in a performance that included Respighi’s Pines of Rome and featured mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor and pianist Daniil Trifonov.

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bahl received a double degree in music and rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley. He has been a conducting fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and completed his master’s degree in Orchestral Conducting at the Manhattan School of Music with teachers Zdenek Macal and George Manahan. Among his mentors and conducting teachers are Kurt Masur, Christoph Eschenbach and David Zinman.

About the Richmond Symphony
Founded in 1957, the Richmond Symphony is the largest performing arts organization in Central Virginia. The organization includes an orchestra of more than 70 professional musicians, the 150-voice Richmond Symphony Chorus and more than 260 students in the Richmond Symphony Youth Orchestra programs. Each season, more than 200,000 members of the community enjoy concerts, radio broadcasts, and educational outreach programs. The Richmond Symphony is partially funded by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. www.richmondsymphony.com