In Friday’s (7/2) Toronto Star, William Littler writes that, on a recent trip to Jacksonville, Florida, he “made a point of attending the final subscription concert of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra’s current season to hear the North American premiere of [Michael Colina’s] setting of the Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos (Caprices). Situated in North Florida, far from the fleshpots of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville may not loom large on the musical map, but I encountered here a lively arts scene. … Fabio Mechetti, conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra for the past decade, has made it a policy to feature music by Florida composers on his programs—a policy, sadly, without parallel in most Canadian orchestras—and when he learned of Los Caprichos, premiered in 2008 in Brazil, he decided to pair the now local composer’s new opus with Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (in the Ravel orchestration) to produce an art-inspired finale to his Masterworks Series. … Discovering Los Caprichos and Michael Colina in Jacksonville offered a timely reminder of how much interesting music-making goes on outside what are traditionally regarded as major music centres.”
Posted July 6, 2010
