A DAY OF CELEBRATION!

ROXY JONES AND THE HENDERSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

By Ann Parenti

Roxy Jones is a talented 15-year-old musician who has been studying piano since she was four.  Roxy has won the Forgotten Song Foundation scholarship more than once. My husband, Curtis, and I were thrilled to represent the foundation that evening and were honored to attend the Henderson Symphony Orchestra in February 2022 to watch her perform Chopin’s Concerto No. 1 in e minor, in its entirety–which consists of more than forty minutes of beautiful, and complicated, piano music!  Her performance was only topped by her beauty, and the audience gave her two resounding standing ovations.

In early 2020, Roxy won the opportunity to play concertos with two orchestras, one in Nevada and the other in Utah.  Unfortunately, both concerts were canceled by the pandemic restrictions.  Not all was lost, though, as the Henderson Symphony Orchestra invited her to be their first guest piano soloist after things normalized to a point where that would be possible.  The extra time, combined with stay-at-home orders, allowed Roxy a unique window of time to focus and learn a longer, more complicated piece than she originally planned to play with the orchestra. Roxy told us this concerto is more than 100-pages long, and she had it ALL memorized!

Roxy studies under the direction of Natalya Panchenko, and the Henderson Symphony Orchestra is conducted by the very talented Alexandra Arrieche.  Check out our story in Chic Compass’ previous edition (Volume 3 Issue 1) about Alexandra Arrieche, too!