POTSDAM -- SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music will open its year-long 125th anniversary celebration with the 2011 Spring Festival, featuring internationally-renowned conductor Helmuth Rilling and showcasing many of its exceptional students, faculty and staff.

This year, the Spring Festival will be a week of educational opportunities topped with a special concert performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Mass in B-Minor" at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, April 30 in Hosmer Hall. There will be a pre-concert lecture offered at 6:30 p.m.

The concert is free and open to the public, but tickets must be reserved by calling 267-2277 or 267-2812.

The 2011 Dorothy Albrecht Gregory Visiting Conductor, Rilling, will spend a week on campus, from April 25 to 30. One of the world's preeminent interpreters of Bach, Maestro Rilling is known across the globe for his work with choirs and orchestras.

Rilling will conduct the Crane Chorus and Crane Symphony Orchestra. Guest soloists from Germany and across the U.S. will include soprano Julia Sophie Wagner, mezzo-soprano Sophie Harmsen, tenor Nicholas Phan and baritone Christòpheren Nomura.

The Spring Festival includes a full slate of workshops, conducting masterclasses, lectures, rehearsals and recitals. All events are open to the public, space permitting. For more information on the schedule of events, visit www.potsdam.edu/academics/Crane/125years/schedule.cfm.

The final concert will be broadcast live over the Internet via mp3 audio stream, at www.potsdam.edu/academics/Crane/streaming.

The finale of Crane's 125th anniversary celebration will be held in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City on May 1, 2012, when the Crane Chorus and Crane Symphony Orchestra perform the Verdi "Requiem" under the direction of the 2012 Dorothy Albrecht Gregory Visiting Conductor, Ann Howard Jones.

Born in 1933 in Stuttgart, Germany, Rilling is active as a conductor, pedagogue and an ambassador for the music of Bach worldwide. In 1954, Rilling founded the Gächinger Kantorei and 11 years later, in 1965, he founded the Bach Collegium Stuttgart as the choir's regular orchestral partner. Ever since, Rilling has been intensely involved with the works of Bach and has felt a strong link to this composer's oeuvre. In addition, Rilling has been a fervent advocate of "neglected" Romantic choral music as well as commissioning and performing contemporary choral music.

He won a coveted Grammy Award in 2000 for his recording of Krzystof Penderecki's "Credo" and was again nominated in 2001 for his recording of Wolfgang Rihm's "Deus Passus."