The Rochester Symphony Orchestra & Chorale in Minnesota has announced that it will perform “A Song for Sendai,” a free outdoor community concert on June 15, to raise funds for the Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra in Japan. Donations will be accepted at the concert, which came about after Executive Director Jeff Amundson and board member Vikki Wolff visited Japan following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which devastated numerous concert halls in Sendai and elsewhere in the Tohoku region; the Sendai Philharmonic had to cancel most of its 2011-12 season in the wake of those events. The RSOC has commissioned Garth Neustadter—a composer of scores for PBS, Warner Bros., and Turner Classics Movies—to write “A Song for Sendai” for the June concert. The Sendai Philharmonic was founded in 1978 and performs 120 concerts a year, including nine subscription concerts as well as opera, ballet, and community engagement programs. Since the earthquake, the Sendai Philharmonic has performed free concerts at various locations, such as street corners and evacuation shelters in Japan.
Posted March 29, 2012
