Wind Ensemble to feature founding conductor in farewell performance

Barbara Favorito, La Sierra’s associate provost, an educator and noted musician with numerous awards, will take up the baton one last time to direct the musical entity she initiated in 1990, the year La Sierra came into its own as a university. Favorito is retiring from a 25-year career at La Sierra during which time she served significant roles with the university, including as its director of wind and percussion studies and music department chair.

On Sat., May 2, she will direct the second portion of a concert by the La Sierra University Wind Ensemble which will feature alumni of Favorito’s previous performance groups. The ensemble will play two folk songs by Percy Grainger, “Irish Tune from Country Derry” and “Shepherd's Hey,” and “Symphony No. 3” by Alfred Reed. 

Dean Anderson, La Sierra’s director of orchestral studies and interim Wind Ensemble conductor will lead the concert’s first half which will consist of “Prelude on a Hymn of Praise” by James Curnow, “Este seu olhar” by Antonio Carlos Jobim, “Suite Pernambucana de Bolso” by Jose Ursicino da Silva, and “Meditation on a Psalm of David” by Curnow. 

The concert will be held at 8:15 p.m. in the Troesh Conference Center of the Zapara School of Business. Admission is free.

Favorito led La Sierra’s Wind Ensemble until 2005 and chaired the music department between 1999-2004. Her varied musical career includes 11 years teaching in the Seventh-day Adventist K-12 system, 10 years as conductor and artistic director of the Riverside Master Chorale, and five years as founding conductor of the Southern California Young Artists Symphony in Redlands. She also founded the Wind Ensemble at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Mich., a La Sierra University sister school within the Seventh-day Adventist higher education system. She has conducted wind ensembles, bands, orchestras and choirs in 35 states, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and South America.

“I have so many favorite memories of conducting the Wind Ensemble for 15 years here at La Sierra University, I am not sure where to start -- they would fill a book,” said Favorito. “I guess the best memory is the way the students always rose to a level of excellence and achievement that was even more than I had hoped.

I established the Wind Ensemble, both here and at Andrews University, because I wanted to give the wind and percussion students an opportunity to have the ultimate experience for a large wind group. With one person on a part, each player is responsible for every aspect of the music, every person has to be a soloist on his or her part,” she said.

Favorito earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in instrumental conducting with highest distinction from the University of Miami, the first Seventh-day Adventist to hold such a title. She has worked and studied with some of music’s most prominent conductors including Robert Shaw, Sir David Willcocks, and Erich Leinsdorf. Additionally she is distinguished as the first woman band director to hold the title ‘Director of Bands’ at a university or college, a position she held at Andrews University, and has been recognized in “Who’s Who in Young Women of America,” Who’s Who in America,” many other honors.

Favorito said of her tenure at La Sierra that she most enjoyed “being able to make a difference, both in the lives of the students but also in the life of the university. If you were to ask me what gives me the most satisfaction, it is the almost 40 music teachers who were my college students, who are now out teaching music is the K-12 education system and in higher education. That is what gives me the greatest pleasure.” 

For further information call 951-785-2036, email music@lasierra.edu or visit www.lasierra.edu. La Sierra University is located at 4500 Riverwalk Parkway, Riverside.