Meridian Community College’s Arts & Letters Series will usher in spring with more music – this time, the MCC Community Band will come to the College’s McCain Theater stage.

The free concert is March 26, at 2 p.m. It’s a concert for audiences of all ages, said Jon Romero, MCC band director.

“In keeping with the theme from the previous jazz concert, ‘Jazz in the Abstract,’ this concert will also center around art,” Romero said.

He explained the musicians will be performing “Looney Tunes Overture and Star Trek: Through the Generations” while video clips will be shown as the music plays.

“The highlight of the afternoon will be ‘Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky,’” said Romero. Mussorgsky, a Russian composer during the middle to late 1800s, was a member of the “Big Five” Russian composers, along with Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, Cesar Cui and Nickolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Romero said.

“The piece came into existence after Modest’s close friend Viktor Hartmann, who was a painter, passed away. The local art gallery hosted a showing of Hartmann’s works. Several of these paintings and drawings inspired Modest to write the music. There is a recurring ‘Promenade’ which is supposed to depict Modest and the audience moving from painting to painting, as they change. There are paintings such as: The Gnome, The Old Castle, Two Polish Jews: One Rich the Other Poor, The Hut on Fowl’s Legs, The Great Gate of Kiev and more,” he said.

Romero noted that for this particular performance, he has contacted many of the local and area schools art teachers to have their students draw their own interpretation of the music, and what they think inspired it without seeing the original artwork.

“The student’s artwork will be displayed above the ensemble during the concert, and during their respective movement the teacher and I selected, with the original piece of art that inspired the work at the end of the movement,” he said.For more information about the concert, contact Romero at MCC at 601-484-8637.

For more information about the concert, contact Romero at MCC at 601-484-8637.