Live!

What: ARTS by George! with Brian Stokes Mitchell and the American Festival Pops Orchestra When: 5 p.m. Saturday Where: GMU campus and GMU Center for the Arts, Fairfax

The fall season has arrived and with it, the fourth annual ARTS by George! benefit, presented by George Mason University's College of Visual and Performing Arts.

The event at GMU's Fairfax campus covers the full artistic spectrum -- music, dance, theater, visual art and even creative cuisine. Attendees take a tour of the college's studios and creative spaces to see works in progress by students and faculty, view short theatrical presentations and sample food delicacies.

Along with this behind-the-scenes look at campus creative life, there's a gala concert by Tony Award-winning actor-singer Brian Stokes Mitchell. He'll perform with the American Festival Pops Orchestra, under the direction of Anthony Maiello for the first time. Composed of more than 60 professional musicians from the area, the orchestra includes GMU faculty, musicians from the U.S. military ensembles and regional orchestras, and selected young artists from the university's School of Music.

After the performance, gala ticketholders can attend a champagne and dessert reception on stage with Mitchell and key members of the GMU community. (Tickets are also available for the concert only).

One person who will be there is Vincent Oppido of Long Island, N.Y. Oppido, a graduate student at the School of Music, worked with Mitchell to arrange a new composition that will open the concert.

"It's one of those things that's just meant to get the audience excited, get them in the mood for the tone of what the evening is going to be -- great Broadway classics," Oppido said of the work.

The original overture features musical motifs from musicals in which Mitchell has appeared and came about as a way to give the orchestra a special moment on its special night.

"This will be their inaugural concert," Oppido said. "Stokes was talking to his management about how the orchestra should have something for them to play because it's their first concert, just them, instrumental, and then he'll come out and do the rest of the show."

The question was how to make the two elements work together. The aha moment came, Oppido recalled, when someone asked, " 'What if we do a medley of the songs you're famous for singing?' Stokes was very excited about it and said he wanted to get in contact with me directly."

Oppido, who has a BA in music from GMU, had some experience dealing with visiting guests and event compositions. But "nothing as big as this."

"I would be asked to arrange some songs for the holiday concert, or the Pops concert during the year," he said. "When Leonard Slatkin came to conduct the orchestra about two years ago, I wrote an original work, a fanfare-overture kind of thing that incorporated little motific ideas from the pieces that he had conducted at GMU with us over the years."

For the Mitchell overture, Oppido began his collaboration with the singer over the phone and met with him in his New York City apartment.