NEWS CONTACT:
Jennifer Brink, Executive Director
Phone: (518) 793-1348
E-mail: exdir@gfso.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 16, 2025
The Glens Falls Symphony presents “Peter and the Wolf” for 1,300 Children
The Glens Falls Symphony will present their 2025 Children’s Concerts on November 18 and 19, with multiple performances of Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.” Under the baton of Music Director Charles Peltz, the Glens Falls Symphony will bring alive the beloved story of young boy, Peter, and the animals of the forest (the Fox, the Duck, and more), through a concert on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, at 9:30am, at the Queensbury High School Auditorium. This performance will be attended by students from Queensbury, Glens Falls, and Ticonderoga. The second will be on Wednesday, November 19, 2025, at 10am at North Warren Central School District for students from North Warren Central School, Keene Valley, Schroon Lake, Minerva, and Crown Point. Each performance will be 50 minutes in length.
"Peter and the Wolf" was written by composer Sergei Prokofiev in 1936 and was meant for a children's theater in Moscow. The story and the music were written by Prokofiev; he used instruments from the four instrument families - strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion - to tell the story. This piece serves as a great introduction to music and the instruments of the orchestra. In the story, each character is represented by a particular musical instrument.
As the colorful and engaging narrator, the orchestra welcomes special guest composer, professor, and “We Are Instrumental” founder, Evan Mack.
This is the third year of the Glens Falls Symphony’s revived tradition of the children’s concerts, with an expanded geographic range of schools from Washington County, Warren County, and the southeastern Adirondacks being invited to attend, at no cost to the students or to the schools. Glens Falls is the smallest city in America to support a fully professional symphony, making this opportunity unique and important for the rural school districts it serves. “With an array of electronic devices and access to the internet, kids have so much at their fingertips" said retired Senator Betty Little. "However, there is nothing like the sound of a live symphony. The Glens Falls Symphony is phenomenal. These students are in for a very special and memorable treat."
Symphony Executive Director Jennifer Brink says “Sharing the tremendous range of the orchestra sounds with young people who may never have heard these instruments before is a wondrous thing. We are delighted that after 2023’s incredible success with three performances of the children’s opera, “Lucinda”, we can bring our local children a new program with music that has delighted audience of all ages for nearly a hundred years. We hope to continue this program with new concerts each year so that the Glens Falls Symphony forms a critical piece of every local child’s cultural education. We feel we have a duty to share this great art with children, and to contribute to building the arts audiences of tomorrow.”
The Glens Falls Symphony 2025 Children’s Concerts are sponsored by Dan & Jan Hazewskim the New York State Council on the Arts, and generous support from the New York State Department of Education, facilitated by the Office of Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner.
These concerts are not open to the public, but photographs will be published on the Symphony’s social channels following the events. Media presence at the concerts by reporters may be arranged by contacting Executive Director Jennifer Brink at exdir@gfso.org.
Visit www.theglensfallssymphony.org or call (518) 793-1348 for more information.
Office hours: Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

# # #
About Glens Falls Symphony
The Glens Falls Symphony, begun as a community amateur orchestra in 1977, and now moves into its fifth decade of music-making as a professional orchestra. Since Maestro Charles Peltz’ arrival in 2000, the fully professional Glens Falls Symphony has performed a dynamic repertoire, regularly including musical premieres and world-renowned guest artists.
The orchestra continues to expand its musical and educational offerings to include Children’s Concerts for up to 3,000 students in the 7-county region in Warren and Washington counties, plus in the southeastern Adirondacks. The orchestra served over 14,000 people in 2024, and the 42nd anniversary season welcomed the largest audiences in its history. The musicians offer master classes, as well as family concerts, summer pops programs and more. Cited as “one of the great orchestras of our country” by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Joseph Schwantner, the orchestra comprises professional musicians who come from all over the Northeast, and beyond, to perform.
About Evan Mack
Believing that opera should be theater grounded in expression that delivers larger-than-life stories and music that harnesses the full athletic thrill of singing, Evan Mack has devoted much of his compositional life to opera and song. His first major operatic composition, where he served as both composer and librettist, was Angel of the Amazon. “Angel” premiered in May of 2011 by Encompass New Opera Theatre at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City and was subsequently released on CD worldwide by Albany Records. Two years later, Fresno State Opera Theater premiered The Secret of Luca. This was the first of several collaborations with librettist Joshua McGuire. In August 2016, their American grand opera Roscoe premiered at Seagle Music Colony to rave reviews. Roscoe received its orchestral world premiere with the Albany Symphony starring Metropolitan Opera star Deborah Voigt. In between the two large scale projects, Mack & McGuire found time to write the first ever opera for Twitter #IsOperaDead – an opera in 5 acts lasting one minute and forty seconds.
Their Christmas opera for children, Lucinda y las Flores de la Nochebuena is quickly becoming a holiday standard with yearly productions by San Francisco Opera, Opera in the Heights and Fresno State Opera, who commissioned the opera. The one-act opera The Ghosts of Gatsby premiered by Samford Opera in Birmingham, AL in 2019 and won the National Opera Association’s Argento Chamber Opera Competition. Mack & McGuire’s latest, Yeltsin in Texas! premiered in 2020 by TCU and Opera in the Heights. It’s now in development to become a musical comedy!
Evan Mack has proven as deft at song writing as he is in opera. His song A Little More Perfect is a setting of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s final paragraph of the Marriage Equality Decision by the Supreme Court in 2015. Premiering at Seagle Music Colony in 2015, it has quickly become a favorite of many baritones including Michael Mayes, Daniel Okulich and Michael Miller to name a few. The song had its professional premiere at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2016 and the orchestral premiere at the Fort Worth Opera Festival in 2017. His new cycle If Only Lenny Were Here, which celebrates the life of Leonard Bernstein had its world premiere with the Schenectady Symphony in October of 2018.
Evan was named “2018 Professional of the Year” by Musical America, was a composing fellow at the John Duffy Composers Institute and a resident artist at Yaddo. He is currently published with Hal Leonard, Alfred, and Amazon. Evan is a Teaching Professor at Skidmore College. He lives in Ticonderoga, NY with his wife, Kristin and two sons, Carter and Henry.