It will indeed be “Some Enchanted Evening” Friday, July 10, as the St. Mary’s College of Maryland River Concert Series   brings the wildly popular music of such Broadway shows as South Pacific, The Sound of Music, and Oklahoma!  by award-winning songwriters Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein to the stage. The 11th year of the campus’s summer evening entertainment will feature world-class music and food from local vendors. Gates open at 5 p.m. and concerts start at 7 p.m. The concerts are free and open to the public, and picnic baskets are welcome. For more information, visit the River Concert Series Web site.
 
Guest conductor Larry Vote, SMCM professor of music and college provost, will lead the Chesapeake Orchestra in well-known favorites such as “Younger than Springtime,” “My Favorite Things,” “I Whistle a Happy Tune,” and “There is Nothing Like a Dame.”
 
Guest artists include soprano Diane Atherton, who has entertained in every major music hall in the British Isles: mezzo-soprano Olivia Vote, a resident artist with the Academy of Vocal Arts; tenor Stephen Cramer, here last year with a tribute to Gilbert and Sullivan; and baritone Robert McDonald, a regular in musicals in Washington, D.C. Atherton has sung at the premiere of Kleiburg’s Requiem at Washington’s National Cathedral and performed such classical pieces as Handel’s Messiah and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8.
 
The goal of the River Concert Series is to assist in economically enhancing the region and cultivating a cultural tourist destination by organizing arts and historical offerings. In 1999, the Chesapeake Orchestra began a residency relationship with SMCM with the initiation of the River Concert Series. Since then, the Chesapeake Orchestra has sought to provide musical programming to reach the broadest possible audience.
 
The River Concert Series has become the cornerstone of growing arts activities at the College and throughout St. Mary’s County. St. Mary’s College of Maryland, designated the Maryland state honors college in 1992, is ranked one of the best liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report and Kiplinger’s. The Princeton Review named it a “best value college” in its 2009 edition. Founded in 1840 as Maryland’s “monument school” commemorating the state’s first capital, SMCM is the state’s only public honors college, offering “an Ivy-level College with a public-school price tag” (Newsweek).
 
Some 2,000 students attend the college, which has the highest graduation rate for all Maryland public colleges and universities, and an SAT average for student admissions of 1848. The school’s waterfront campus along the St. Mary’s River in Southern Maryland is home to the 2009 National Intercollegiate Sailing Association Co-ed champions.