By Anne Levin

The annual showcase presented by the Westminster Conservatory of Music this Sunday, May 4 at 3 p.m. allows students and ensembles from the Conservatory and Rider University the opportunity to perform at Richardson Auditorium — acclaimed for its acoustics and its architecture — on the Princeton University campus.

On the program are the Westminster Community Orchestra, the Rider University Chorale, the piano duo of Phyllis Alpert Lehrer and Ena Bronstein Barton, student singers from the Honors Music Program, and the young winners of the Westminster Conservatory Piano Competition.

While the event is held every year, this one feels especially significant to Ruth Ochs, who has conducted the Westminster Community Orchestra for the past two decades (Ochs also leads the Princeton University Sinfonia, which performs at Richardson on Friday, May 2).

“With the support of the Westminster Conservatory of Music, this concert has taken place annually for quite some time, and we use the Richardson Auditorium stage and our programming to feature a wide variety of ensembles and soloists from within the Westminster Conservatory family,” she said. “This year’s concert honors the significant legacy of the Westminster Conservatory, its teachers and many decades of students.”

The future of the Conservatory — which remained on the Princeton campus of Westminster Choir College after Rider University moved the college to its Lawrence Township campus in 2020 — is currently being decided. The Municipality of Princeton, which acquired the 23-acre Westminster campus from Rider early this month, has expressed a commitment to coming up with a way for the Conservatory to continue at the site after June 17, the end of the semester and the end of Rider’s involvement.

Reached by phone on Tuesday, Princeton Council President Mia Sacks confirmed that discussions involving arrangements for the Conservatory to remain on site are actively underway.

While Ochs and the rest of the Conservatory community await news of its future, she is focusing on the upcoming concert. The Westminster Community Orchestra, in its 39th season and made up of professional and amateur musicians from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, will perform a suite from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess as well as music from The Empire Strikes Back by John Williams, in honor of May 4, which is Star Wars Day. Each soloist on the program will perform with the orchestra.

The Rider University Chorale, which is directed by Tom Shelton, plans to perform selections from their recent program, “The Wilderness of You.” The ensemble is open to current Rider students, faculty, staff, alumni, and members of the surrounding community. Shelton is an associate professor of Sacred Music at Rider, where he teaches conducting, sacred music, and music education.

The concert will also include the world premiere of Searching, a work by Conservatory faculty member Cecelia Reilly. A graduate of Westminster Choir College, Reilly has been teaching piano and music theory at the school since 2000. Pianists Barton and Lehrer, frequent performers with the Westminster Community Orchestra and other groups, will play the first movement of Mozart’s Sonata for Piano Four-Hands in C Major.

Piano Competition winner Caelan Costello, who is 14 and studies with Hendry Wijaya, will perform the second movement from Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor. Ten-year-old winner Vito Cottone, who studies with Lehrer, will perform the first movement from Mozart’s Concerto No. 12 in A major, and fellow winner Joanne Hou, 16, will play the first movement from Rachmaninov’s Concerto No. 2 in C minor. She studies with Jessica Rey-de-Castro.

Tickets are $20 ($15 for students and seniors). Visit tickets.princeton.edu, call (609) 258-9220, or purchase them at the door.